


let's pretend this song won't end

by fallingflurry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of homophobia, and some description of anxiety, anyway, i guess a warning for very very mildly described assault, it's filled with really sappy tropes and i'm loving every second of writing, literary homophobia? historical homophobia?, of course there's a bit of angst too, this is definitely the most domestic fluffy thing i've ever tried writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-02-11 09:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12932085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingflurry/pseuds/fallingflurry
Summary: Neville finds life after the war to be stressful and anxiety inducing, especially when an attack makes him have to go into hiding. Especially when the only hiding place acceptable is a cottage in the middle of nowhere, presently occupied by a war torn Severus Snape.





	1. when I come home, if I come home

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this work is from the magnetic fields' nothing matters when we're dancing.

Neville really loves the house.

It doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t even have an address. It’s perched on top of a hill, no roads leading up to it, no other houses in sight, except for the village far down in the valley. Perched is really the exact right word. Like a bird, it’s nestled in between the forest and the view of the fields down below. Somehow it feels both heavy and sturdy and light and flighty. Impermanent. Maybe that’s only because he knows him living there is temporary. Maybe he thought it was ominous at first. Maybe the loveliness of the house is an idea he has constructed in his head, afterwards. 

During those first few nights he lies awake and in a desperate attempt at positivity he lists the things he likes about the house, and finds that really the house is perfect. On the wooden floors there are carpets of all sizes, overlapping. Warm, heavy furniture, like the furniture itself is keeping the structure grounded. It’s not a crowded house, not at all. There are large plain windows facing the fields on one side and on the other sturdy wooden walls, and the last thing it feels is crowded. It’s a mishmash of old sturdy foundations and new additions, a modern kitchen and bathroom and running water and electricity (magically supplied) but obviously it’s been used by older generations of wizards, out here in the country side. There’s a garden, or could be, on one of the short sides of the house. As it is it’s just a patchy piece of land but Neville could make something out of it. It’s like someone made it for him. His own house. 

The lower level has an open floor plan, a gently curved staircase in the middle of it, separating the kitchen from the living room. The upper level is something else, several small rooms nestled together tightly. There seems, impossibly enough, to be too many rooms upstairs, like the upper level is too big somehow. 

The windows from his room face out into the forest, something he doesn’t mind. It makes him feel safe, to see the vague shapes of trees outside his window when he tries to sleep. Snape’s windows face out to the fields below, which Neville supposes in turn makes him feel safe. People always approach from the fields, have to Apparate into the loosely clustered trees down below and go by foot up to the house. Sometimes a few brave hikers can be seen in the distance, like small moving black dots. Neville thinks Snape likes to see people coming, to be aware where people are. That’s probably a smarter instinct, to be honest. 

The whole situation is what it is just because Neville couldn’t see people coming. He should be able to by now. They’re selling him as a war hero, the Prophet and the Ministry. War heroes should be able to sense people coming. 

He doesn’t remember much. They hit him from behind, he remembers that and the pain, but not much else. He remembers waking up in St Mungo’s, he remembers Ginny’s worried face. He remembers waking up in the middle of the night to his grandmother sleeping in the chair by his bed. She must be tired of hospital visits by now. 

He’d been at some event or other, there are so many. He’d thought that once the war was over he’d be left to his own devices, but no. When he tells Luna about it, he makes crack about peace not being very peaceful. Even now, more than a year later, there’s so much to do. The hearings have started, people are being sentenced. There’s been rebuilding, of Hogwarts, and Gringotts and the Ministry and people’s homes. Rebuilding and cleaning up and meetings and oh so many funerals. Neville is exhausted, always. He’d been tired at this thing too, a mingling thing, with bubbly drinks and canapés and he’d been so tired. 

He jokes that now at least he got to spend some time in bed. He jokes, when they tell him they haven’t found the guy yet and that he’ll have to go into hiding, that he’ll get a vacation. It’s not very funny but Ginny laughs anyway, huffs and frowns. 

He spends too long in St Mungo’s, takes advantage of their magic wards, the protection they can offer. Really, it’s not much wrong with him. They’d hit him fast with some sort of stunning spell, all he really feels is a headache and some pain in his back. The spell had been some new creation, a blend of different hexes. They must have been planning to take him somewhere, hide him away somewhere. That’s frightening. Neville spends many waking nights thinking about what they could have wanted with him.

It bugs him that he can’t remember what the event was for. Who the tribute was to, or what new Ministry initiative they were toasting to. It can’t have been important. Harry wasn’t there, or any of the others. The official gatherings he goes to usually only are when they want the complete set or when they can’t get anyone else. He’s not the picture of a war hero, he knows that, he doesn’t want that. Hardly any of them do. He killed a snake and fought some people but he’s still bumbling and too round and clumsy. He doesn’t know how to speak in public, not really. Not as naturally and easily as Harry or Ginny or Hermione. So, it has to have been something small. 

He doesn’t go off to the house on the hill at first, of course. He thinks there must have been a lot of serious conversations that he’s missed while lying in his sick bed at St Mungo’s, to find a solution that works.

“It’s just for a little while,” Ginny tells him, when finally, they tell him something. She sits in a chair by the end of his bed, leans forward onto her knees. “You’ll stay with Andromeda and Teddy. Just for a bit.”

“Do you really think they’d try again? I mean, am I worth all that trouble, do you think?” he jokes, again. Ginny doesn’t laugh, that time. 

She shrugs, won’t meet his eyes. “Let’s hope not.”

Living with the Tonks family is fine. Andromeda is very nice, but looks so much like her sister that he finds it hard to look at her sometimes. Especially when she’s serious and sad and sits at the breakfast table staring out in front of her. But then she snaps out of it, turns to the baby, turns to laughing at the unintelligible blubbering. It’s fine. 

He stays until the first threatening note appears on the front steps. It’s nothing really, on its own, just a few short words. ‘You’ll get what you deserve,’ it says, on plain beige parchment, in harsh red ink. Andromeda is the one that finds it, magically pinned to the front door. She’s the one that tells him he has to leave, which is fair. He would have anyway. She stands in the kitchen with the baby in her arms, clutching the blanket she has him in hard, as they discuss where to take him, who can take him in. 

He’d like to live with Luna, or the Weasleys, but he knows he can’t. That’s where they’d expect him to go. 

Harry is there, looks tired. “Grimmauld place?” he says, the question mark behind the words very clear. 

“Too easy,” Ron answers. They’re all there. Neville feels like a child, his heart hammering in his chest, all these adults talking about him, not to him. 

“It’s too central and the wards are too weak right now,” Hermione says, the hair in her bun falling loose as she shakes her head. “And not while you’re living there, Harry. If it’s some sort of fanatic, they’d love to get you in the bargain.”

“I really only keep some of my stuff there,” Hary mumbles, shrugs. “And me and Neville make a good team, don’t you think? We could fight off a couple of dickheads easily.” He turns to Neville, and smiles weakly. He’s trying. 

“Still, Harry, it’s too big of a risk.”

None of them dare to contact the Ministry. They’ve reported the crime of course, probably have some stressed Aurors working on the case, but there are too many leaks to dare to try to get housing through the Ministry’s contacts. No one is exactly sure, still, where people’s loyalties lie. So they sit there, argue about where and who and when and are the wards strong enough, do they have space, would that choice be too obvious. Andromeda leaves, puts the baby down to sleep, and it’s just the four of them, on the sofas in the living room. 

Hermione is the one who thinks of it, of course. “Snape’s,” she almost shouts, spreading her hands out in front of her. She smiles, like she’s finally found the answer to a particularly tricky exam question. 

Harry huffs, surprised, and Ron starts to say something. 

“No, listen to me, it makes sense. It’s remote, the wards are incredibly strong, and it’s the absolute last option anyone would think of,” she grins. 

“You think he’d agree to that?” Ron asks, his eyes on the coffee table. 

“I could ask,” Harry nods.

At this point, Neville doesn’t know about the pretty house on the hill. He doesn’t know where Snape lives at all. He knows he was hurt, badly, during the battle at Hogwarts, but not really any more than that. 

“Where does he live?” Neville asks, and suddenly they all look at him, like they’d forgotten he was there. 

“He’s up north,” Hermione starts, glancing over at Harry. “Harry, um, Harry got him a house.”

Harry looks embarrassed, shakes his head and won’t look at Neville straight on. “It was the least I could do. It would be… Neville, it would be perfect. No one knows about it, maybe ten people, max. And it’s really only me and Snape that knows where it is. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, the wards are out of this world, I mean… It’s Hogwarts level, except no people going in and out.”

Neville nods. It’s really fine with him. It really is. Snape probably isn’t… Snape probably isn’t what he remembers. And he doesn’t want to be a burden. He thinks about Andromeda’s scared grip tightening on that baby blanket. 

So he says yes when they ask him. What else can he do? 

He spends a week couch surfing, staying at a different house every night. It takes a while for Harry to get a solid answer apparently, and Neville is in some sort of limbo. He has trouble sleeping, keeps thinking his back hurts, where the spell had hit him. It’s phantom pain, all in his head, but still he stares up at so many ceilings, so many nights, unable to sleep.

When he finally hears that he’ll move, everything happens all at once. He’s been staying at Luna’s house that last night, and he’s grateful for that. He knows he won’t see her for a while, wants to make the most of it. They lie awake in her bedroom, him on the floor on a mattress and her in her bed, bundled up in four covers. They don’t say much but he’s able to sleep with her there, hearing her breathing next to him.

Harry Apparates there in the middle of the night, and scares Luna’s dad half to death. Neville is outside and ready to Apparate in maybe fifteen minutes. He’s still wearing the shirt he slept in, and his mouth feels fuzzy and swollen. He can barely keep his eyes open when Luna hugs him goodbye, tightly. She pats him on the cheek, tells him he’ll be fine. He really hopes so. 

The road there is quite the trek. They can’t Apparate straight there, but have to hike up the hill. Neville has no idea where he is, no idea where they’re going. It’s still dark out, it must be three in the morning. Harry is cheerful, keeps telling him to hurry up. They walk for an hour, at least, follow a zigzagging trail through a forest and Neville trips twice, lands hard on his knees in the mud. Finally, the forest opens up and he can see up the hill. Now there is no trail, now Harry seems to be walking only based on his memory, higher and higher up the hill. Just when Neville thinks he can’t walk anymore, when his backpack feels too heavy for him to carry, Harry stops dead in his tracks. 

“We’re here,” Harry says and Neville can’t understand anything until Harry takes a step forward and is gone. He stares into the dark night, frowning, and then follows him, carefully steps inside the magical line that Snape or whoever must have laid down.

And then he can see it. There are lights on, flickering and warm candles and a fire. Neville can see the grey smoke against the now lightening sky, a slowly moving line of grey. He can see inside the house too, and Snape, a dark outline. He’s standing on the porch that wraps around the house, looking down at them. Yes, maybe this first meeting was ominous.

Harry raises a hand in greeting, is already halfway there, and Neville hurries to catch up with him. His legs ache, his back is sore again, so the hurrying comes out as more of a slightly quicker hobble.

Is he scared of Snape? He mulls it over in his head, but can’t seem to find a definitive answer. He tries not to stare at him when they walk up but the glances he dares shows him a very tired, frayed face. 

“How are you doing?” Harry smiles politely, as Neville hides behind him. He should stop. He tries to stand straighter, tries to look Snape in the eye. 

“The same as last time,” Snape answers without smiling. “It’s too early in the morning for pleasantries,” he continues. Even if he’s paler, even if Neville can see the scars snaking up over his collar, he still has those dark unpleasant eyes. 

“You’re right,” Harry agrees, and then stands there awkwardly. “I’m sorry for the hour, I thought it’d be best if we-“

“Snuck here in the dark of the night?” Snape offers quietly. 

“Well, yes,” Harry agrees again, lets out a small laugh. “I know it’s an intrusion,” he adds, seriously. “It’s very generous of you to do this. Right, Neville?”

Neville jumps at his name, harks out a, “Yes, very,” which Snape ignores. 

“Generosity,” Snape mumbles, but uncrosses his arms and gestures to the open door behind him. “Come in then, if you must.”

They follow him through the door, into the kitchen. Inside, it smells like pine and coffee. Harry seems used to the house, knows where to put his feet but Neville stumbles over carpets and books. There are books everywhere, stacked on the floor and in bookcases all over the place. 

“There’s coffee,” Snape says, without looking at them. “You can take the bedroom with the blue door,” Snape says and when Neville doesn’t answer, too busy gaping at the inside of the house, he adds, “Upstairs. If that is acceptable to you?”

It takes Neville a few breaths to answer, he feels so dizzy and tired, but then he finally gets it and gets out a quick, almost inaudible, “Yes, thank you.”

“Well,” Snape says, grimaces as he looks between them. “I’m very sorry to leave this stimulating conversation, but I do have work. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Thank you,” Harry says, and then Snape opens a wooden hatch in the floor next to them, with a wave of his hand. He descends with a cup of coffee in his hand, carefully holding onto the railing. When the door slams shut, Neville seems to deflate. His posture changes somehow, his breathing eases. 

Harry smiles weakly, like he’s sorry for him. Or for Snape maybe. 

“He makes pretty good coffee,” Harry tells him. Neville doesn’t know what to say to that. They stand there, awkwardly, until Neville shifts to peek at the door in the floor. 

“What’s under there?” he turns to Harry and shuffles his feet. 

“It’s a potions lab,” Harry says and sighs. “I’ve never actually been down there.”

Neville nods and shift his feet again. 

“So, um, I’ll follow you upstairs, help you get settled I guess?” Harry offers and Neville nods again. It’s so hard to know what to say suddenly. He feels as if Snape can hear him, as if he can see them as they trudge up the stairs to the second floor. 

Upstairs Neville is met with this surprisingly intricate labyrinth with narrow hallways that make unexpected turns. They find the blue door, again Harry seems to know where to go, and Neville can finally shrug out of his backpack. The room is sparsely furnished, doesn’t look lived in. There’s a bed, and a closet and some boxes in a corner, and not much else. Well, Snape seems to have laid out sheets, and a pillow, which Neville finds surprising. 

“Okay,” Harry says, smiles again. Neville is starting to feel that it’s alarming, all this smiling. 

“So. Nice view,” he says, and stalks over to the window. Looking out that window it feels as if he’s all alone here, no one else but him and the trees. It’s comforting and frightening all at the same time. Being alone in general, and being here especially.

“Yeah. Yeah, very nice. Do you have everything you need?” Harry asks, his hands in his pockets. He looks like he wants to leave but won’t say anything. As much as Harry seems to know his way around this house, around Snape, he’s nowhere near comfortable. At least not now, when Snape isn’t here. Now they both seem aware of the awkwardness of this arrangement, and Harry seems aware that Snape is only tolerating him and that that’s how it should be. 

“I think so. Thank you, sincerely,” Neville says and tries to keep Harry’s gaze. He has a hard time with that, with eye contact. It used to be worse, though, at school for example. In Snape’s classes, thinking that maybe if he just didn’t look up maybe Snape would leave him alone. No, he’s not afraid of Snape anymore. Not like that. 

“It’s no big deal for me, Neville,” Harry says, and then, after a moment starts up again. “He’s… He’s really not what he used to be. Or, I mean, he did some very brave things… That must have been hard, you know.”

Neville does know. It was all over the papers, and is probably why Snape lives out here. To get away from the attention, good and bad. Neville can relate to that. And, well, it can’t be easy living with a Dark Mark these days.

“Not that I’m asking you to forgive him,” Harry looks up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what to say. “He was a dick to you. I know that. It’s very-“

“Everything’s gonna be fine, you don’t have to worry,” Neville assures him. He can’t stand looking at this nervousness anymore. And besides, he knows everything Harry could say to him. 

Harry is still frowning, still standing there uncertainly. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Outside the window, the sun is starting to come up. Neville can’t see it for the trees but he can see the pastels of the sky. 

Harry looks like he wants to say something else, but Neville thunders through the conversation. The coming loneliness is starting to creep up on him, and if Harry doesn’t leave soon, he won’t have the courage to stay. 

“Tell my grandmother I’ll be fine. Tell Luna I said hi,” Neville says. He won’t be able to communicate with them, not with anything that could have a magical trace. The fireplace isn’t connected to the floo network. He can’t Disapparate anywhere. The only way to reach anyone is by owl, and he’s been warned about using owls too often. Snape gets his papers once a week, delivered to a false name. Security measures, Harry had told him. From what? It’s extreme, isn’t it? But Neville guesses that there are a lot of upsides for someone who is practically a war criminal to live in the middle of nowhere, minimal contact. 

Now, it’s less minimal contact. Now, it’s Snape, isolated, and then Neville. An uncomfortable side character in Snape’s self-imposed isolation. 

“Yeah, I will,” Harry mumbles, and then hugs him. He pats him awkwardly on the shoulder, squeezes and then pulls away. “If anything happens, go down to the end of the wards and Disapparate. I’ll be back next month. Snape can fill you in on the rest, I’m sure.”

Neville feels brave when he nods and pushes at Harry, smilingly tells him to leave. He still feels brave as he watches him walk off, disappear into the trees further down in the valley.

He’s gone. Neville is alone, except for this unpleasant hermit he’s living with. Lovely. His life is lovely.

He sits there on the porch for quite some time, his head in his hands, looking out at the view. There is here, the kind of beauty that knocks the wind out of you, that’s almost threatening in how pretty it is. Overwhelming. He tries to breathe. 

\--

He grabs a cup of coffee, mainly because there’s nothing else to do. It is good, Harry wasn’t just trying to lighten the mood. He listens for any noises from the cellar, but can’t hear anything. The illusion of being all alone seems very real. He wonders if Snape can hear him. If Snape is even still here. Maybe he has some secret door down there that opens into some street in a big city. Maybe this is all a lie, him living here alone, all the time. Neville is only supposed to be there for a few months, maybe less. He can’t imagine that Snape has chosen to live here by his own accord. 

He walks through the downstairs, opens drawers in the kitchen, tries to memorize as much as he can when Snape is not around so that he won’t look like an idiot when he is there. He doesn’t want to have to ask Snape, not about anything. 

He walks down the three steps to the sunken living room, stands there in the silence. The silence and the golden light from the rising sun outside the large windows makes it, yet again, unreal. Neville feels like the air is thick, somehow. It coats his lungs, gives him a sick feeling. Like the sunlight isn’t just light, but something physical, something filling up the room.

He sits down in the sofa, puts his cup down too on the cluttered coffee table. Takes steady breaths. This happens to him sometimes. He had it before the battle, had it before that last rough year at Hogwarts even, these moments where something tugs at his lungs, makes it hard to breathe and concentrate and stand up. 

It’s too much. The intensity of it, how pretty the place is, the loneliness. Not just lonely in no company but lonely in feeling, lonely in the sense that he has no one to talk to and even if he did they wouldn’t understand it. The loneliness isn’t inherent in the place. Neville has brought it with him, and here it simply has more space to unfurl. 

He’s felt like that a lot growing up. It’s hard not to. Having no parents, that’s one thing, but having parents but still that absence of parents. Living without them, but still being able to see them. Seeing them and them not seeing him. That’s something else. He never had these episodes when going to see them. He’s grown up with that, that’s just his life. But mail at Hogwarts, for example, that could set it off. Seeing the others get packages from their parents. Howlers, even. That loneliness is built in him, deep in him, and he’s used to it. It’s just sometimes too much, too clear. Like now. 

He’s left his grandmother, but she’s never needed any help with anything. She’s never coddled him, not like he imagines a mother would. Maybe he’s harsh. She’s been good to him. She’s just… severe. It’s all in his head probably. This feeling that she’s not his mother, that she can never be. But she’s better than no mother at all, he supposes. 

He doesn’t know why this place has caused him to think about all this. The house is nothing like his grandmother’s house. It calms him though, to think about her. She’s the most composed person he knows. His breathing slows, it gets easier, and his eyes slowly drift closed. All this, the panic, it can wait until he’s slept. 

He dreams anxious dreams where he can never seem to turn around in time, can never catch the people skulking behind him in time. When he wakes up, he’s unbearably hot, the sun streaming into the living room and into his face. He squints. 

It takes him a minute to realise that what woke him up wasn’t just the sun, but the banging noises, what sounds like cabinets opening and closing, the banging of pots and pans. 

He gets up unsteadily, is confused about where he is at first until it slowly comes back to him. Right. The banging continues, growing in volume as he cautiously makes his way to the kitchen. 

It’s Snape of course. Who else would it be? He doesn’t acknowledge Neville entering except with a flicker of his eyes towards him. It’s not until Neville speaks that he even looks at him properly. 

“Do you need me to help with anything?” Neville asks, as Snape continues to open and close the cabinets, continues to search for something. 

“No,” he says and then stops what he’s doing, sighs. “I suppose you want me to show you around now, yes? Or did Potter do that?”

Neville steadies himself with a hand on the kitchen counter. Like this, with the counter between them and the light so bright and happy, Snape looks like a real person. Not like some scarred ghoul, not like a scary authority figure. It’s a bit jarring, unexpected. 

He’s wearing less clothes, fewer layers, maybe that’s it. Not his usual tightly buttoned robes, the ones he wore as Headmaster, as Potions Master. Now he has on a shirt, sleeves rolled up and then dark slacks. His hair is longer and tied back with a ribbon in a ponytail, or a loose sort of bun. His Dark Mark stands out against the pale skin, even if it’s faded now. The snake doesn’t move anymore, just lies there, dead, coiled around the skull. The colour has gone out of it. 

“Harry showed me my room, I guess,” he nods and then falls silent. Snape glares at him. 

“Alright,” he says slowly. He thinks Neville is stupid. He thinks he’s slow. It’s aggravating and Neville looks away, ashamed or angry, or both. It’s small really? Isn’t it? Not that it’s a small gesture, but that it makes Snape seems like a small, sad man. A bit pathetic that he has to act like that, so aggressively condescending? Who does that? Someone like Snape, doing that to someone like Neville? He’s just angry now.

“Thank you,” he says instead of shouting. “Thank you for letting me stay here. I know it’s an inconvenience. Hopefully it will just be for a little while but in the meantime, I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

Snape seems momentarily thrown by the politeness. Just for a moment, he looks him straight in the eye, doesn’t say anything at all. Then he grimaces again, opens his mouth, says silkily, “How gracious of you. Sweet.”

His voice is dripping with sarcasm, and it sounds almost painfully agitated, especially that last word. 

“As you said, hopefully it’s just for a little while,” Snape continues. “It’s very simple: don’t interrupt me when I’m working, don’t move any of my things. You’re free to take whatever you want from the pantry, just don’t make a mess. The food is replenished once a month, with magic of course, write me a note if you need something specially delivered. No one comes in and out of here, except for the owl, once a week. You’re free to use her to deliver any letters.”

He speaks in a level tone, like this arrangement is normal. Like anyone would choose to not have human contact.

“Don’t go in my bedroom, don’t go outside the wards,” he says, gestures as he talks to outside the windows. “There’s only one bathroom, upstairs. I know you’re a teenager but try to make an effort not to spend hours in there.”

As he says it, Neville finds it really difficult to imagine Snape ever being his age. 

“I’ll try,” Neville says calmly.

“Good,” Snape says and nods. “Alright then.”

Snape leaves, glides out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and Neville is alone again, alone always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked this very slow and sad beginning, i promise you that the rest of it isn't all this bleak! 
> 
> the title of this chapter is from abigail, belle of kilronan from magnetic fields' 69 love songs.


	2. and the only beauty here is the moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title for this chapter is from the magnetic fields' bitter tears from the album 69 love songs (they're all from 69 love songs, it's a very prominent theme in this one. as a 90s queer myself i think neville would be able to relate.)

He writes a letter to Luna, two weeks in, tries first to sound positive and then to sound sincere. He describes the house and the landscape. There’s not much to tell her. He asks her instead of how she’s doing, out in the world. Last time he was there, the night Harry came to bring him here, she’d talked about going away. Finding some creature that Neville is ashamed to admit he doesn’t know the name of. He asks her about that, tells her to write back. It’s a depressingly short letter. He doesn’t sign it, but she’ll know who it’s from. 

He spends the first two weeks mainly sitting around in his bedroom, barely sleeping or, in worst case scenario, jerking off. There’s not much else to do. He thinks he goes five consecutive days without speaking to anyone. Snape’s routines keep them separate for most of the time. He eats at the oddest times, extremely early in the morning and extremely late at night. Maybe he takes fruit or sandwiches down with him in the cellar? That’s where he is, all day every day. Like a people hating, shy animal, burrowing deeper into its lair. 

Not that Neville eats either. It’s hot, too hot to cook, so he gets by on cereal and coffee mostly, maybe some carrots or, if he’s feeling very fancy, some lentils in a pot with some tomato soup. Anyway, they both seem to stay out of the kitchen since that’s where they’re most likely to bump into each other. Basically, if you don’t count the coffee in the kitchen and the occasional steps heard in the hall outside his bedroom at night, Neville can pretend he’s here all alone. 

By day twelve he feels like he’s going crazy. The isolation that he’d at first thought might be good for him, is grating. The boredom, which he mistook for some sort of peace, is growing. He’s itchy, all the time. Fidgety. He can’t sit still, he can’t sleep. He’d try to go for a walk, but that would just be walking in circles around the house, wouldn’t it? He’s gotten into the habit of stealing Snape’s books, the boxes in his room being full of them. They’re the only ones he dares to borrow, the ones in his room, he thinks Snape might notice otherwise, if he’s moved them. All of the ones he gets his hands on are on potion brewing, or magical theory, things that almost put him to sleep. So, by day twelve, he talks to Snape, catches him as he ascends from his lair to make food, at almost midnight. 

“Sir?” he says, jumps up from the dining table. It’s stupid. He shouldn’t call him that. Making Snape feel more important than he already does seems like a horrible idea, and it makes Neville sound like a child. 

Snape reacts like he’d forgotten Neville was there, twitches and then turns to him slowly, as he makes his way up the stairs. 

“What?” he spits, like Neville had interrupted an important thought. 

“Do you think…” Neville starts and then has no idea how to finish. “Could I help with anything?”

He still has no idea what Snape does down there. Makes potions, yes, but for who, and why? 

“What do you mean, help?” Snape won’t look at him again, just slams the door shut behind him and starts making dinner. Neville realises he’s forgotten to do the dishes, and can feel his face grow warm. Snape specifically told him he had to clean up after himself, he specifically said it. Snape doesn’t say anything, just moves in a big circle around the sink. Deliberately, it has to be, to make Neville feel bad about it. 

“I mean, um,” Neville starts again, still blushing. “I don’t know what to do. All day. Do you think I could help you with anything? I mean literally, anything.”

Snape raises his eyebrows, looks amused and angry all at the same time. “You’re bored?”

“Yes, I guess,” Neville gets out, his lungs doing that thing again. His clothes feel tight, no his whole chest, like his body is too small for this. “I mean, I-“

“Providing you with entertainment wasn’t mentioned in that little speech Potter gave me when he talked me into taking you in,” Snape says coolly, his hands working at chopping something, Neville doesn’t even know what. “He seemed to emphasise the fact that you have a roof over your head, the safety of my wards etcetera.”

“I know.” Neville can hear how agitated and restless he sounds, and wonders if Snape sincerely does not or if he cares so little about Neville’s state that he just ignores it. “I know that. It’s very kind of you.”

“Kind?” Snape says, smiles unpleasantly down into the cutting board. Neville stops looking at his face then, looks down at Snape’s hands. It’s calming, not having to look at him, avoiding his face. His fingers are long and thin and calloused and he works quickly. 

“I just, I don’t have anything to do,” Neville rushes through the sentence, ignoring Snape’s comment. “I’m going a bit crazy.”

Snape doesn’t answer again, just looks down at what he’s doing. 

“I could do whatever. Let me chop something for you, or make dinner, or whatever. I can cook. I’ll clean if you want me to,” he rambles. “Do you need anything organized? I’m great at organizing, and I could-“

“Herbology,” Snape interrupts, finally. Neville is so grateful to be able to stop talking that he doesn’t even care that Snape talks over him. “Plants, you’re good at plants, is that right?”

“Yes!” Neville almost shouts, smiling. “Yes.”

Snape hums down into the kitchen counter, and then looks up. At the sight of the serious, black eyes, Neville stops smiling. “Well, then. If I gave you some seeds, you could plant them? Manage them, fertilize, water?” 

“Yes, definitely,” Neville nods. Now he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, keeps pushing them into his pockets and pulling them out again. He can’t seem to do well when Snape is ignoring him, and this attention is unnerving too. 

“The food delivery is due Thursday, I’ll make sure to order whatever you need,” he says, almost pleasant now. 

“What day is today?” Neville asks. To say that he hasn’t been keeping track of what day it is would be an understatement. He barely knows what month it is. Every day has been sunny and green and bright, every night is cool and quiet. He knows it’s summer, he knows it was a Tuesday when he came here, but not much else. 

Snape looks like he wants to roll his eyes, and gestures to the wall behind Neville. “The calendar says Monday, I’m inclined to believe it.”

Neville swivels around to the calendar on the wall, where the days are crossed off. Yes, Monday. The calendar has, to his surprise, an illustration of a kitten in a water bowl, looking out at them curiously. He wants to laugh, not just because of the juxtaposition of that silliness with Snape, but because his grandmother has that exact calendar. He doesn’t though, since he can already feel Snape’s glare, even if his back is turned, even if it’s not completely formed yet. 

“Thank you,” he says, already starting to back out of the kitchen.

“Do you expect me to pay you? For working the garden?” Snape asks and Neville stops in the doorway. Snape’s eyes are intense and condescending. “Or should we consider that something in return for you being able to stay here? Rent, as it were?”

Neville swallows. “Sure. No, um, I don’t need to get paid.”

“Perfect,” Snape says, and Neville hesitantly makes his way up the stairs again. When he’s halfway up the stairs, Snape calls out to him, “You’re free to borrow my books. Don’t forget where you took them from, remember to put them back.”

After that, it’s easier. Neville is almost ecstatic when he climbs the stairs, and lies awake in bed in anticipation of that delivery, which, as he thinks about it is almost painfully pathetic.

He wonders, at night, before he falls asleep and has those unnerving nightmares, what his friends are doing. He imagines Harry and Ginny having dinner together, he imagines Luna on some exploration trek, her wand tucked behind her ear and her hair falling in front of her eyes as she bends down to look at something. And Seamus, and Ron and Hermione, the DA. He imagines Hogwarts, where some now are taking stray classes, as they rebuild and restructure. They’re smiling, all of them. 

He feels happy. Or motivated, at least, when he wakes up. He still had the nightmares, doesn’t think he’ll ever stop having them. But it helps a little and he’s rested when he goes downstairs and finds that today, Snape hasn’t gone down into the cellar. 

He stops dead in his tracks when he sees him sitting there reading the Prophet, sipping his coffee. Neville cautiously takes a few steps towards him and then regrets it when Snape peers over the top of his newspaper and smirks at him. Of course. He remembers now, what he sleeps in, what he doesn’t change out of when he goes downstairs, because usually, Snape isn’t there. He’s in his underwear and, more importantly, a bright purple T-shirt that Ginny gave him. On the T-shirt it says, in large white letters, ‘I’m great in bed, I can sleep for days’. It’s a silly, childish thing that Ginny gave him out of spite because he overslept and missed a DA meeting. He can feel himself going red in the face, and again he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, pushes at the fabric of the shirt, stretching it. 

When he was younger he used to fantasize about meeting Snape outside of school one day in the future, when he was taller and more handsome and successful and Snape was smaller somehow and still grumpy and old. He’d walk past Snape graciously, being competent and happy and better, and he wouldn’t be afraid of Snape, and he wouldn’t be so goddamn powerless. This was not a scene he fantasized about. In fact, this is the opposite of that. 

“Good morning,” he squeaks, but can’t seem to move up the stairs again. To move would be to admit defeat, to admit that it is making him uncomfortable. As he moves past Snape to grab a coffee, he realises that Snape is fully dressed, fully buttoned up. This is a nightmare, he must still be sleeping.

“Good morning,” Snape says from behind the paper, and Neville sinks into the chair opposite him, wants to keep sinking into the floor. 

And then they sit there in silence and it must be the worst morning in Neville’s life. The silence stretches on and the sips he takes from his too hot coffee sound in his ears like deafeningly loud, disgusting slurps. Any time now Snape is going to lower his newspaper and glare at him and tell him he’s appalling and inappropriate and Neville will have to bury himself out in the woods. 

“You said you would like to be more… occupied,” Snape finally says, folds the paper into a neat stack. He looks like he’s been up all night, has dark circles under his eyes. Maybe he always looks like that nowadays. 

“Yes?” Anything to make this morning stop, Neville wants to say but doesn’t.

“As you might be aware, the venom of a snake such as the one that bit me will cause more than physical damage,” Snape starts, his eyes boring into Neville’s own. Neville’s knows what he must look like, stupid and young, with those dumb light blue eyes of his wide and flitting around the room. “I’ve found it has had a slight effect on my magic. It has made some spells very… tricky.”

Neville nods, like he has any idea what Snape is talking about. Like he’s not preoccupied with his own embarrassing awkwardness. He’s talking in short, chopped sentences, like he has planned out what he’s going to say in advance, or like he has had to repeat himself many times. 

“If you’d like to help, as you said,” he starts, and this Neville thinks must be practiced. The delivery is so stiff he has to have practiced that. “You could be of some use with a potion I’m brewing. Assisting me. Today.”

He’s still staring at Neville, seems determined to stare at him throughout the conversation. Maybe that’s a power thing? Maybe that’s compensation for actually being forced to ask something of Neville? Is he asking for help? He’s framing it like it’s Neville who is the needy one, like he’s doing Neville a favour and not the other way around. 

“Sure!” Neville gets out. He just wants to leave this room. “I mean, if it’s not too complicated. I’m not very good at potions. I mean, you know that. Obviously.”

“I assure you that it’s well within your range of competence,” Snape says without smiling, without even sounding like he’s gloating. 

“Glad to help,” Neville smiles and then they just look at each other, silently. “Oh, um. You mean right now?”

Snape tilts his head to the side, as if he was shrugging. “Unless you’re otherwise occupied, but I seem to recall you saying you were bored?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Neville rambles, swallows. “I’ll just, I, um, need to get dressed. I’ll be down in a minute.”

He takes this chance to run upstairs before even getting an answer from Snape, and throws on the first clothes he spots, a plain blue T shirt and jeans. He breathes, once, twice and tightens his fists. He’s so angry with himself for letting that happen. He hates this. 

Oh God, what if he can’t do what Snape wants him to? The spell is easy, he said, but that only makes it more awkward if he fails. 

When he comes downstairs again, Snape is gone and the door in the floor is open. He glances down it, can barely see anything. 

“Come down,” Snape calls, his voice coming from somewhere in that darkness. 

It takes his eyes a while to adjust to the shade in the cellar. It has windows, but they’re high in the ceiling, small and facing the wrong way, towards the woods. When he finally can make out the shapes in the dim light, he sees Snape, first, standing behind a working bench. It looks exactly like one of the potions classroom, and in a panicked second, Neville thinks he’s back there. His palms are sweaty all of a sudden. 

The walls are lined with shelves, full of pickled things Neville doesn’t want to look to closely at. He steps closer, peers into the cauldron Snape is stirring. Down here it smells heavy, like potatoes and beets. It must have been built for food storage, a root cellar. On top of that there is the metallic smell of the magical fire Snape has going underneath the cauldron, and the potion itself. The potion smells like candy, sugary and sticky in his nose. 

He feels honoured to be down here, in a strange way. This feels more like being invited into Snape’s home than actually living in his house does. 

“It’s simple,” Snape says and then he says some things that don’t seem simple to Neville at all.

“Um,” he says, and Snape rubs his eyes, frowns. 

“Point your wand into the cauldron and repeat after me,” and then he says some words Neville can’t understand. 

Neville’s hands are sweating so much that he can’t seem to hold on to his wand properly. But he does it. The potion reacts, goes from deep purple to green, swirling angrily. 

“Did I do it? Did I do it right?” Neville asks, looks up at Snape who frowns. 

“Yes,” he says, stirs. “Yes, thank you.”

Neville blinks, looks at Snape’s face properly. He doesn’t smile, but his face seems softer, his eyes seem brighter. That’s happy, right? That’s Snape being happy? Maybe? 

And then Snape takes a step away from him, shifts his weight away.

“Anytime,” Neville mumbles, tries to smile. It doesn’t work, not here, not literally underground.

Snape ignores him again, stirs and crumbles something into the cauldron. “You’re free to leave,” he says, and Neville swallows again. 

“Oh, yeah, okay,” he goes, and wipes his hands on his jeans. “What, um, what is it?”

Snape sighs, like he can’t believe this conversation is happening. “I doubt you’d find it interesting or that you’d understand it, for that matter.”

“I was just making conversation,” Neville tries, looks around him in the room. Those things in the containers aren’t so scary. He knows half of them, half of them are just dried or pickled plants. He knows those. It’s not scary, Snape’s not scary. 

“It’s a variation on a healing potion,” he finally mumbles, into the cauldron. He glances up at Neville. “Is that enough information?”

Like Neville is forcing him, like this is just him catering to Neville’s needs. He’s the one doing Snape a favour, he’s the one forced to be here. He can feel the anger bubbling around in his chest. 

“Yes, that’s enough,” he says, a bit too sharply, and turns to leave. 

It’s not like Neville is a horrible house guest? It’s not like he arrived and made a mess of the whole house, played loud music at all hours of the night, invited all his friends to stay on the couch. Neville is a lovely guest, he knows that. He knows that and still, he feels like crap now, he feels like crap for allowing himself to be this dependent on people. That’s usually not a problem for him, but it builds up. He knows he’s a guy that needs help sometimes, and he’s happy to give it back to people. That’s how the world works, for him at least. He’s not Harry, he knows that. Harry who quite literally saved the world. What has Neville done? Nothing. Neville killed a snake. The DA was first all Harry and then all Ginny. He’s a helper. 

His thoughts spiral into one big tornado of anxiety and anger and sadness and he stomps around in his room, not knowing what to do with himself. The next time Snape asks him for help, he’s on his own. Maybe, before he got here, he’d had some dream that maybe Snape was different now. Maybe he’d changed for the better. Maybe he even wanted to apologize. But people can’t change, people don’t just suddenly become better people. 

\--

Snape doesn’t even tell him his things have arrived, just leaves the boxes of things out in the kitchen for Neville to find one morning. He hasn’t been interested in talking to Neville after that morning, hasn’t been interested in sharing coffee again. Of course not, Neville thinks bitterly, he got what he wanted, why would he want to talk to the world’s most annoying fuck-up, Neville Longbottom, who is now apparently invading his home. 

It’s been a week of misery, really. He hasn’t wanted to leave his room, for fear of bumping into Snape again. Maybe it’s just as much his fault that they haven’t had a conversation. But then again, he tried. He tried and Snape is the stubborn one, Snape is the one who won’t act like an adult. 

He gets a mix of magical plants and edible ones, and spends the day prepping for planting it, around the corner of the house, where the shade and the sun will be best for what he’s planning. A few spells and he thinks he will get the environment right. It takes quite the mix of different soils and humidity and heat levels to get this to work. Some seeds he’ll plant in the earth, some he’ll use large pots for at first and then transfer when they’ve taken root. He uses the spells Sprout taught him, to make a sort of temporary greenhouse. It’s not very stable, won’t withstand all types of weather, but will hold for now. It creates this bubble where Neville can tamper with the air and the dirt, create things. 

Oh. What if he has to stay here until winter? Cooped up in the house with Snape, the weather too harsh to go outside, no one but him and Snape. Oh, no. He has to sit down at that thought, in the dirt and grass and breathe for a second before it passes. It will be fine. It won’t be that long. 

He enjoys watching the seasons coming and going, watching their effect on the things he plants. It’s like nature breathing, slow breaths – but now it is more handy ignoring that and creating his own conditions instead. He enjoys it too, not only because it’s a sort of power he hasn’t been able to match anywhere else, but also because of the lack of power. The push and pull of having to adapt, use his intuition, because in the end he’s not the one who decides whether his plants grow like they should. He can tamper with almost everything surrounding the plants, but he can’t force them to grow.

He’s going to grow the best plants Snape has ever seen. He won’t know what hit him. The potions where he uses Neville’s ingredients will be the best he’s ever made, he decides. Yes, getting back at Snape for what, being his usual self, by giving him good ingredients? By making his work better? Yeah, right. 

It helps though, with the emotions. That’s the best thing about growing things, it clears his head. There’s not much room for anything else than what his hands are doing. Finally, he stops being bored. 

Snape didn’t think to give him gloves, or boots, or anything like that so at the end of the day he spends an hour soaking in the tub upstairs. He’s marinated in dirt and sweat. It’s lovely. 

He sleeps well for the first time in days. No nightmares, no explosions or vines choking him or that now familiar electric feeling at the back of his neck. He doesn’t dream at all.

He wonders if Snape has nightmares. The thought is unwelcome, invading. He doesn’t care what Snape dreams about. He should have nightmares. 

Does he toss and turn? Does he dream about the battle too, does he dream about getting hurt? About those weeks he spent in the hospital? Does he dream about Voldemort? 

Neville does sometimes. Dreams about those red eyes, staring at him from the dark, that whispery, hoarse voice and the things it can say to him in the night. How he’d heard that voice in his head during the battle, invasive and wrong.

So, getting to work helps that first night at least. Not the second, or the third. He goes to bed just as tired as before but every time he closes his eyes, he panics, he can’t stomach the dark. He knows he’ll fall asleep and then he’ll be helpless, he’ll lie there and won’t be able to do anything, won’t be able to help. The third night after he starts the garden, when the dreams are unbearable, he gets up instead, thinks that maybe some air will help. 

With some trouble, he gets the window open and takes deep breaths of the chilly July night air. He feels like his lungs could contain the entire sky, like if he kept breathing this harshly, this quickly, he could destroy this view. It doesn’t work.

He scans the view anyway, the dark trees. The lights are on downstairs and he can see the glow spill out into the grass, and then a shadowy shape moving. Snape, it must be. Snape, inside the house, in the living room, moving about, his shadow cast across the grey night landscape. 

His breathing slows down. Instead of gasping, he takes slow mouthfuls, instead of his lungs aching with the strain of the entire sky, they feel like a part of him, a part he can control. He laughs into the silence.

He’s not alone. That cliché realisation is probably what calms him, he thinks afterward, when he works in the garden. There’s a difference, in the end, between being alone and being alone with someone else. The second option is easier, the second option gives him at least a few hours of sleep. 

\--

He tries to talk to Snape again because he’s an idiot. An idiot who needs company apparently, and so one night when he can’t sleep he goes down into the living room, browses Snape’s books and waits for him to appear and be unpleasant. 

He’s figured out what bothers him about the house. There are no pictures. As his eyes glide over the walls, the bookcases crammed in everywhere, it’s obvious. There are some paintings on the wall, abstract shapes and colours, but no family pictures. No school pictures of awkward teenagers in a rebellious phase, wearing too much makeup, no baby pictures distant relatives send you of their babies dressed up in costumes or bundled in blankets with snot running down their face. 

He wonders if Snape has a family. He can’t have close family, or a partner, Neville would know about that wouldn’t he? They would have come visit here, or he would have read about it in the paper. Oh god, what if Snape has a partner? The thought makes him physically react, stiffen his back and fidget with his hands, which is surprising. Snape has to have family. He has to have at least had someone, once. 

A woman or a man? That thought too makes him almost squeal with unease. This always happens, his brain always betrays him. That’s why he’s so uncomfortable at dinner parties or Ministry events or any place that require small talk. He always jumps to the most inappropriate thing, and then it sits there in his head and simmers. 

He’s heard from Harry about Harry’s mother. He knows there was a thing there, not really what it was. He’s heard the Prophet’s version, of course, of doomed unrequited love and Snape’s brave choices or whatever but he doubts the people at the Prophet have ever met Snape, the most dramatic, sourly effeminate man in the wizarding world. 

No, effeminate isn’t right. Snape is masculine, but so buttoned up, so strict and proper and odd. Neville knows that oddness, thinks he does anyway. So, he can’t be strictly straight then. Neville wonders if he’s the first person to sleep here, or if Snape has had other visitors. Visitors sleeping in his bed, in the bedroom where Neville is never allowed. 

“Oh god,” he groans, miserable at his own pathetic need to always do this, always try to find the most embarrassing thing to wonder about. 

“Is my selection of books not to your liking?” Snape’s voice scrapes from behind him. 

Oh Jesus. Neville turns around like he’s been caught stealing. He bets Snape heard everything he thought, even if that’s impossible. The thoughts in his head are so loud and obtrusive that he bets Snape can somehow pick up on them. 

He freezes. He can, can’t he? He’d forgotten. Snape is a Legilimens, isn’t he? Oh, god. He can feel his cheeks burn and tries to remember how that works, but just gets angry with himself. If he’d just stuck to ignoring Snape, to thinking normal, angry thoughts, this wouldn’t be necessary. 

“No,” he says, tries to avoid Snape’s eyes. That’s it, isn’t it? Eye contact. “No, I just, um…”

Snape takes the few steps down to the sunken living room, and Neville feels like he’s going to choke. 

“I, um. Yeah, do you have any suggestions? For what I might, um, like?” he rambles. 

Snape is quiet for a moment, shuffles the books on the coffee table around. “I have some things on herbology,” he says, finally. “I have no idea if you’d ‘um, like it’,” he mimics. 

Neville laughs nervously, dares a glance up at Snape’s face. He looks tired, like always. His hair is loose now, and cascades almost past his shoulders. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days, greying stubble starting to show. 

He walks past Neville, bends down and pulls two books out of the shelf, dusts them off with the sleeve of his shirt. “Here,” he says, and hands Neville the books. One is a paperback, light and thin, and the other an older book, bound in leather. 

“Oh, hey, I’ve read this one,” Neville exclaims.

Snape raises his eyebrows in questioning. “Is that part of the curriculum?”

“No,” Neville swallows. “No, it was a gift.”

From Luna. She’d ordered it for his birthday and he’d read it in one night, sitting in his bed at his grandmother’s house, covers drawn up to his chin. 

“I would love it if you’d return it in one piece. It’s a first edition,” Snape adds and Neville sucks in a breath. 

“Woah, yeah, okay. I won’t leave any coffee stains on it,” he says with a smile and Snape just glares at him. “That was a joke.”

“Funny,” is the only word he gets out of Snape. He gets up to start a fire, hunched over and poking at the timber in the fireplace. When the fire starts taking off he takes out his own book and sits down in the sofa, crosses his legs and is quiet.

And then Neville stands there, awkwardly flipping through the books, until he can’t take it anymore and sits down. The room is warm now, and the sofa is comfortable and soft. He sinks into it like mud, like soft earth. 

Snape glances up at him from his book. 

“I can leave if you want,” Neville says, watches his reaction. There is none. Snape just sits there, looks at him. “I mean, I don’t want to bother you.”

After a moment he says, “It’s fine.”

And they sit there and read together in silence, and it’s nice. Snape isn’t nearly as unpleasant when he just doesn’t talk. The book is interesting. Neville switches between the one he’s already read and the new one. It’s about Asphodel, the basics and then for some reason how to grow it at high altitudes. 

“Have you read this?” he asks at a particularly interesting point. Snape doesn’t answer. Eventually, he drifts off to sleep, the warmth and all this softness spreading inside him, inside his head. He wakes up to sunshine through the windows, and an empty seat where Snape had been. He wipes drool of his face, and scrambles to his feet. He must have looked ridiculous, but somehow that’s fine. It’s fine, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the lovely comments!
> 
> i'm doing something different with this fic (different for me) and will be sticking with just neville's point of view. with snape's character i'm going for some sort of (maybe more depressing) mr rochester type and that just doesn't work for me if you also know what snape is thinking. and it's a bit of a challenge for me to write since all i want to do is jump in his head and show you how twisted around everything is in there. 
> 
> anyway! hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	3. where the colours are too intense

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title for this chapter is from the magnetic fields song long forgotten fairytale.

Harry comes to visit after three weeks, almost a month. Neville sees him walk up to the house from the living room windows and reacts like a dog whose owner is coming home, finally. He almost expects to be wagging his tail by the time Harry gets to the door. He seems like he has expected something to happen, like he has expected them to become friends, or to have fought each other, physically. Neville wonders if he’d find that satisfying, punching Snape in the face. Probably not. He wonders if he’d find it satisfying to wrestle Snape to the ground, hold him down, but then swiftly stops wondering.

Anyway, they haven’t done any of that. They’ve still barely spoken. Sometimes when Neville goes down to eat breakfast, Snape is there, drinking his coffee. Sometimes, when Neville can’t sleep, he sneaks to the stairs, sits in the shadows where Snape can’t see him and listens to him read, the crinkling of the paper and crackling of the fire. Sometimes he even goes down to the living room, sits there and reads his book while Snape ignores him. But they don’t talk. They certainly don’t talk about anything important, they don’t have a showdown. 

It's not that he likes Snape’s company, it’s just that he needs company in general. If he’s going to be choosing between Snape and this big empty loneliness, the choice is easy. At least anger is something. 

Snape is for once not in his underground lair, and sits and has coffee with them. One or two sips of coffee at least, before he politely excuses himself to keep working. 

“How’s it going, then?” Harry asks, almost as soon as the door has slammed shut. 

“I was going to ask you the same thing. Do they have any new leads, or…? Or any idea of how long I have to stay here?” he asks and knows the answer as soon as he’s stopped talking. 

Harry shakes his head, looks down into his coffee cup. “We’re all working on it,” he says. 

“Yeah, I know. It’s going pretty well actually,” Neville says. Lying, surely. He wouldn’t say it’s going well if he wasn’t trying to avoid making Harry worried, or making the people Harry is sure to report to worried. He’s sure Harry must talk to Luna and the rest of them when he returns to civilisation. If he wasn’t afraid of worrying his friends he would tell Harry about waking up in the middle of the night with that panicked loneliness tearing at his lungs, about trying desperately to keep busy and only succeeding half the time, about how he can’t stop being curious about Snape. That alone should be cause for worry. 

He writes this to Luna in vague terms. Don’t worry, she writes back. Maybe it’s good for you. Some sort of process. Neville doesn’t exactly know what that means, but he trusts her. 

He thinks it’s just that he’s nineteen and Snape is literally the only person he’s met for weeks, the only conversational partner that’s available to him. He thinks about Snape way too often. He thinks about what he eats, what he reads, what he works on. When he sleeps, what does he dream about? What does he sleep in? See, it gets creepy. 

He doesn’t tell Harry any of that. He smiles and talks about the garden, and tells him about Snape letting him borrow his books. It’s not a long list of things to be excited about, honestly. 

“How are things on the outside then?” he jokes and Harry gives one single chuckle. 

“They’re good,” he nods. “Your grandmother wanted me to tell you she’s proud of you-“

“Yeah, I know,” Neville interrupts. He can’t hear that right now, prefers not to think about his grandmother at all. If he does, he’ll just feel sadder for himself than he already does. 

Harry keeps talking. “Luna’s good. Me and Ron start Auror training now in the fall. Luna and Ginny are still taking classes. Um… Seamus and Dean are great.”

It’s just a list. Neville wants him to describe what they’re thinking, what they look like. Did Ginny finally cut all of that hair off, like she talked about? Has Hermione sorted things out with her parents yet? Harry is good with listening but bad with actually asking, and it’s infuriating that he’s the medium that Neville has to go through.

“That sounds great,” he says instead of bickering. He doesn’t want Harry to leave. He wants him to stay the night, he wants him to stick around for the rest of Neville’s stay. He can’t go on just having Snape there. 

“Oh, by the way,” Harry says, grins at him. “I brought some more of your stuff.”

He pulls out a bag from his own backpack and slides it across the table. 

“You know, just some more clothes. I packed your music player too, and,” Harry pauses slightly, “since the chances for you going home before your birthday are slim… There are some presents in there too.”

Neville wants to cry, and maybe he does, maybe his eyes just tear up a little bit. Harry shifts in his seat, reaches his hand out across the table. 

“I’m fine, it’s just,” Neville starts, pulls his hand away. “I’m fine, really.”

Harry is quiet for a long time and then says, clearly, “I wish things were better.”

Neville laughs, and dabs at his face with his shirt sleeve. “Yeah.”

“Look, I’m sorry but,” Harry starts and Neville understands. 

“You have to go, I know,” he says. 

“I’m going to go talk to Snape about some stuff, and I’ll come say goodbye before I leave.”

Neville doesn’t let him. He goes out into the garden and when Harry goes to hug him goodbye he smiles and says he’s so dirty now, shows him his grubby hands. Really he’s just been sitting there, shuffling dirt. There’s nothing to do in the garden at all, he just can’t bear to have anyone touch him. He wants to be anywhere else so badly that his entire body hurts, and if Harry hugged him he might just break.

He doesn’t watch Harry leave either, like he did that first time. Instead he sits in the back of the house, stares into the woods. 

Then he goes up and opens the bag Harry brought him. Some more pants and shirts and underwear. It’s not his birthday for almost two weeks, but he opens the presents anyway. There’s a bottle of whiskey wrapped in one of his shirts, some books, his muggle music player and then what looks like a mirror. No, a shard of a mirror. He looks at it, doesn’t see himself but instead just a mass of grey and maybe something else? A shape, maybe? He doesn’t understand what it is anyway, and puts it away in his closet with the rest of his clothes. 

After that he sits on his bed. It’s amazing, this physical exhaustion that comes from talking to someone for longer than ten minutes. It’s not just that, it’s not just the social side of it that bothers him, of course not. He just doesn’t want to think about the other parts. 

To his surprise there’s a knock on his door and Snape is there in the open doorway, looking stiff. He never closes the door during the day anymore. He knows Snape is barely up here then, only seems to come upstairs to sleep. 

“There’s dinner,” Snape says. That and only that. Then he leaves, just as unexpectedly as when he arrived. 

“Thank,” Neville says into his empty room and then walks downstairs. He’d expected Snape to have left leftovers on the kitchen counter, but he’s still there, he’s still sitting at the dinner table, a bowl of something in front of him and his face buried in a paper. 

He looks up when Neville sits down opposite him and makes an uninterested gesture towards the stove. There’s some sort of vegetable stew puttering there, and an empty bowl next to it. Neville cautiously pours himself a bowlful and returns to the table. 

It smells good, like chicken stock and carrots and thyme, maybe. He thinks back to his sad lunch earlier, a piece of toast and a slice of cheese. He glances up to the shape of Snape behind the paper, tries to read the headlines, tilts his head. It’s almost a pleasant silence. Then it hits him. 

“Did Harry tell you do to this?” Neville asks, suddenly having an epiphany. 

“Potter made a suggestion,” Snape says in a level tone. His back is straight, posture stiff compared to Neville whose back is bent over the table. Neville wonders, not for the first time, what kind of relationship Snape and Harry have. That he could ask him to do this. He’s jealous, maybe. Maybe it’s a tiny bit of jealousy that flares up somewhere inside him, unbidden and surprising.

“You don’t have to,” Neville mumbles into his food. “I’m fine.”

Snape twitches, crumbles his newspaper to the side of his plate. “If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t. Neither you nor Potter has that level of influence on my actions.”

He stabs into his bowl, his eyebrows tightly knit together and Neville watches him carefully. 

“Alright,” he says quietly. 

Snape swallows a mouthful of the food, coughs a tiny cough. “I understand the isolation isn’t for everyone.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you having trouble?” Snape smiles unpleasantly. “You could always leave. If you can’t take it.”

Neville bristles, at that. If he was an animal, he would puff himself up. Be bigger and more threatening. He’s not. Neville is, if anything, a housebroken cat. Fat and fluffy and wouldn’t know what to do with a mouse even if he caught one. And then Snape opens his mouth and sounds almost sympathetic, sounds almost nice. All the anger drains out of Neville, all the aggression, leaving him with an empty space. He has to fill it with something.

“There is certainly an adjustment period,” is what Snape says.

Neville watches how his mouth moves, the downward turn of his mouth. Does he mean, for himself too? What else could he mean? Why does he live here, then? There must be other places. This can’t be it. 

This sort of openness is so new that Neville barely dares to say anything, and he certainly doesn’t dare to question him. So he nods, eats. 

“This is very good,” he says and Snape grimaces, sneers. He doesn’t answer. Neville doesn’t do very well with small talk on a good day, and Snape is certainly not making this easy. 

“So, how do you find the Spore?” he asks, and when Neville just stares at him, he clarifies, “The book. Phyllida Spore’s book on fungi.”

“Oh!” Neville breathes. His lungs are doing that thing again. “Oh, it’s good.”

“It’s one of her earlier works, if I’m not mistaken,” Snape continues. He trails off, like he expects Neville to fill in, come with something witty or clever, or insightful. That’s what he’s supposed to do, right? Is that how a conversation works? “Her handbook is required reading at Hogwarts?” Snape offers generously. 

“Yes. You can tell that she’s writing for teenagers with that one,” Neville says without daring to look at Snape. “This is a bit more dense. The language, I mean. I guess the reasoning too.”

“She was already a Headmaster by the time she wrote it, I believe. It’s not hard to imagine she,” Snape says slowly, “knew how to cater to a younger audience.”

“I didn’t know she was a Headmaster,” Neville says, regrets it immediately. Of course he didn’t. Of course Snape knows all these things he doesn’t. 

“She was quite young when she was appointed Headmaster.”

“Younger than you?” Neville doesn’t realise what he’s said until after he’s said it. Now he just has to barrel through it. “When you were made Headmaster?”

Snape’s fingers around his spoon twitch. “Yes.”

Neville doesn’t know what to say now and he regrets talking in the first place. Does he have to upset Snape? Would that help anything? 

“It’s closer to a technicality than anything else,” Snape says, quiet and calm. When Neville looks up, he’s still sitting up straight in his chair, holding his spoon still. “I don’t have a portrait, for example. Only a few of Hogwarts’ Headmasters don’t. I suppose that if I’d died I would have gotten one.”

Neville takes a spoonful of the way too hot stew, sits there with it in his mouth and stares at Snape. When he finally swallows, he still can’t think of anything better to say than, “Yeah.”

He bets that Snape was one of those strange, morbid kids when he was young. Quiet and weird.

“Do Deputy Headmasters get one? A portrait?” Neville says through a cough. This conversation that was first boring and almost insulting, is now exciting. He’d never thought he’d get to ask Snape about this. He hasn’t spent much time thinking about Snape, at all, to be honest. Like most people, and like Snape himself apparently, he’d thought that Snape would be dead by now. Or in Azkaban. And now he wants to ask him about everything, all the bad things he did during those months. The good too, he supposes. He can’t though, he knows that. Snape will stop speaking if he pushes. He probably will. That too is exciting, and scary. He’s panicked, but in a good way. Excited.

“No, they do not.”

“Good, I mean, the Carrows were a lot of things but they weren’t lookers.” At that, Snape smirks, the first time Neville has seen him look remotely happy, unless you count that time in the cellar. 

“No,” he says.

And that’s it. Just a moment, but it’s nice. 

This is a turning point, Neville would say. It gets better after that. He is after all a Gryffindor, even if it takes some coaxing now to get him to act like one. Coaxing both from Harry and from Snape, who sometimes talks to him now. Talks to him like Neville would a pet, maybe, but he still talks. So, that makes it easier for him to talk back. They have whole conversations. Not about anything real, but about the garden, or the food or things Snape reads in the paper.

It’s strange. Not like any other interaction Neville has had. There are no limits to what he can say to Snape, not really. Snape can’t run away, he can’t tell Neville to leave. And, better, Neville can’t be too mean. Snape is going to be unpleasant towards him no matter what he does or says. That’s just the way Snape is, there’s no use in taking it personal. It’s a freedom, that nothing he does matters in the end. That nothing Snape does matters either. 

Kill him with kindness, that’s the strategy. Neville is kind to him, most often, just because that’s his default. He feels bad, being purposefully rude, and why should he be? He doesn’t need to put that kind of effort in, when Snape, most often, seems so taken aback by Neville countering his unpleasantness with kindness.

They eat dinner together most days, if Snape isn’t deep in his work. He’s a decent cook, but seems to treat cooking like he does making potions. He always follows a recipe, something Neville thinks is overrated. Most things that taste good taste good together and recipes have always seemed to him to be complicating things too much. On the evenings where he cooks, Snape hovers in the kitchen, sometimes sits at the dining table and reads. Sometimes he comes up from behind Neville, always so quiet, and peers at whatever Neville is cooking, eyebrows bunched together in a severe and worried look. He never says anything though, and if Neville stops what he’s doing, looks up, he slinks off again. 

The plants are doing well, and whenever he goes out into the garden he sees new sprouts, little glints of green in the dark soil. The summer is still unbearably hot, and most nights he sleeps with the window open so sometimes he can smell the dirt, sometimes the cool night air brings in the scent of pine, or of grass. On those days he doesn’t mind lying awake, he doesn’t mind at all. Now he can listen to music too, and that helps with the loneliness. 

“I’d like to plant some flowers?” Neville says one night when they’re eating. His cooking this time, baked potatoes and chicken and carrots. “Could I?”

“The point of that would be?” Snape asks, only half listening. 

“You know, I could plant some rose bushes? Or summer lilacs? Honeysuckle?” he tries, searching Snape’s face for any hint of interest. “Something that smells nice. So, you know, it would smell nice.”

“You can do whatever you want. Just tell me before the next delivery.” And then he hesitates, puts his fork down gently on the table. “Not roses or lilies.”

“Okay,” Neville nods.

“Do you,” Snape starts and there’s just a small gap before he starts talking again, just the tiniest bit of a longer pause between the words and he looks away, down to his food, “want anything special this delivery?”

Neville doesn’t understand a thing and he knows Snape can tell because he does that thing with his eyes, like he’s holding back from rolling them. 

“It’s your birthday next week, is it not?” he clarifies, seems more comfortable now. Snape having to explain things to Neville is a role he seems to enjoy. 

“Oh,” Neville says and then he inexplicably blushes. Like Snape has given him a compliment or something. “Oh, no, I don’t know. It’s nice of you to ask.”

Snape hums, takes a sip of his drink while Neville fidgets, shifts his weight around in his seat. 

“When’s your birthday?” he asks and Snape looks like he might just get up and leave. 

“January,” he begrudgingly admits. “Hopefully you’ll be out of here by then.”

“Yeah, hopefully.”

“Have they made any progress?” 

“With the investigation? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.” The ever-present panic flares up, just a little bit.

“Do you remember what happened?” Snape’s voice feels loud in the small room, reverberates through him. He focuses on the noises from the open window, the crickets and the wind. 

“Not much. Do you?” Neville can hear how upset he sounds, but Snape doesn’t move a muscle in his face. 

“Yes,” Snape’s voice still feels too loud. They’ve both abandoned their food now, their plates forgotten and the food getting cold. He should get up and put the rest in the fridge, should clear the plates. He stays where he is, they both do.

“Did it hurt?” Neville asks, a stupid question. 

“Yes,” Snape says and Neville is aware that he’s staring at his neck, where he knows the scars are, where he can see the slightest bit of red skin. Snape is aware too, and hooks two fingers beneath his collar, pulls it down. It looks like there’s a chunk of him missing, like something took a bite out of him. Well, something did. 

Neville is grateful for the table between them, otherwise he most certainly would have done something stupid like reached out to touch him. 

“He slit my throat but that didn’t scar quite as badly,” Snape says, straightens his clothes and leans back in his chair. Neville still can’t get the image out of his head, the uneven, red patches of skin burned into his mind. “It’s the venom,” Snape finishes, like that explains everything. 

“What?” Neville whispers, then clears his throat, blinks. 

“The venom. It spreads from the bite, causes the tissue to die, essentially,” Snape explains, all very technical. “It’s not bothersome. Not to the degree that the limitations on my magic is.”

“Mhm,” Neville croaks. He looks up at Snape’s face then, and Snape is smirking at him. Like it’s funny. “I’ve seen worse,” Neville tries, purely out of spite. 

Snape tilts his head, says a sceptical, “Oh?”

“My uncle was bitten by a dog once,” he starts, telling a story that when his uncle first told it to him was only half true and now has degraded into something that just barely happened, and certainly not like that. “I saw it,” Neville lies. “That scar was definitely worse than that little nip.” 

The only response Neville gets is a raise of Snape’s eyebrows, but he looks amused. Before Neville gets up to clear the table, he grins at him. 

These are things Neville looks forward to. These evenings when Snape seems the tiniest bit happy. He feels like an addict, like he needs Snape to react with more positivity every time they talk to each other. A bigger fix, each time. He doesn’t of course. This night is not the norm, not even close. But maybe it wouldn’t be as special if it was? Maybe that Snape doesn’t give it to him as easily makes it more special when he does? 

He wonders if Snape has showed Harry those scars. He wonders if Snape has showed anyone besides the healers at St Mungo’s. 

It’s intimate, isn’t it? He can’t remember if he’s seen this much of Snape’s body ever. Maybe on those rare occasions when Snape was referee at Quidditch games. Maybe then his robes were swept to the side by the wind, maybe then he showed some of his neck, unscarred. 

Those thoughts sneak up on him later when he’s in the shower and he’s not as surprised as he should be when his body reacts. It’s natural, right? Snape is the only person he’s talked to in weeks, months, except for Harry. He’s not even ashamed when he touches himself and thinks about Snape’s arms, his neck, the bare piece of skin behind his ears. 

Afterwards though, then he’s ashamed. Afterwards, when he has to talk to Snape in the morning, when he has to sit opposite from him at the kitchen table, then shame is all he feels. It fills him up like he’s just an empty container, just waiting to be filled with disgust at himself and the situation. Snape doesn’t notice anything. Neville at least thinks he doesn’t. He hopes. Oh, God, he has to not notice anything, he can’t. 

The whole day he swings from pure panic, to anxiety to thinking it’s not his fault. It’s really not his fault. Snape is being nice to him, that’s it, and he’s just reacting to that. Snape has never been nice to him, ever, in his entire life. That sounds horrible. That’s horrible. 

Snape has been nothing but horrible to him, and now he talks to him once or twice and he thinks about Snape in the shower? Snape made his teenage years more hellish than they had to be, he went out of his way to torment him and now Neville can’t stop thinking about his mouth. Neville is pathetic. He might actually be the saddest person he knows. 

He’s even starting to find Snape’s personality almost appealing. The quiet unpleasantness of him is just entertaining now. It has to be the boredom. The boredom and the isolation. It could happen to anyone. 

He does it again. This time it’s the smell of Snape’s hair as he sneaks up behind him to see what he’s cooking. He hadn’t heard him, not even when he was two steps behind him, and at first he’d thought the scent was something he’d imagined, something he’d dreamed up, but no. When he realises, he jumps, slams his knee against the stove, cries out. He can feel Snape’s smirk, burning in his neck. 

When he can’t sleep that night, he thinks about that smell again. He smells like clean cotton sheets, like a cup of coffee after being out in the garden all day. Dusty old books, wood and his lavender shampoo. Neville uses that shampoo too, maybe Snape can smell it on him. Maybe, if Snape had leaned in closer, he would have smelled his own shampoo on Neville. He has to bury his head in his pillow at that thought, from both embarrassment and arousal. His face is red and warm and he comes jerkily, spasms almost painfully. 

Well. He most certainly is the saddest person he knows. 

\--

In late July, when he has been there for more than a month, he has picked up a routine, they both have. 

In the mornings he gets up and finds Snape in the kitchen, drinking his coffee and reading – the paper or a book. Usually, at least, unless Neville has been tossing and turning and haven’t been able to get to sleep until early in the morning. Then, when he finally rolls out of bed at eleven or so, Snape is at work already, down in the cellar. The coffee is still there. 

He eats breakfast or lunch and then works in the garden. Sometimes that can take up his whole day, other days he takes a break, lies splayed out on the lawn in the sun and reads, or listens to music. Sometimes he falls asleep like that, to be woken up by Snape’s shadow across his face, as he tells him dinner is ready. 

They both like to eat early, so they do, and then Snape either goes off to keep working or it’s his turn to do the dishes and he does that while Neville reads the paper. Then they read, in the living room, or in their bedrooms. 

He thinks the adjustment period, as Snape called it, is over. 

It’s surprisingly pleasant, even though Neville is still paranoid, still can’t look Snape in the eyes. Sometimes, Neville is sure that he notices that Neville has started to keep his distance, and other days it seems like Snape is completely oblivious. Either way, he’s still ashamed. He doesn’t do it again, at least. He’s not completely out of control. 

He does think about doing it again, though. As an experiment. Most of the times the fantasies are abstract, more of a focus on a certain piece of him, a scent or a piece of exposed skin. His knuckles. Other times, it’s the terrifying entirety of him. Snape fucking him against the kitchen counter, his hands holding him down. Snape sucking him off, slowly and angrily. That’s the most confusing part. It’s not as if he wants Snape to be tender, gentle. It’s not as if he’s attracted to Snape as a person, as a complicated person surely capable of being all those things. It’s foreign to him, but he likes the anger, the aggression that would undoubtedly be there. He doesn’t know what it is about it that he likes. The degrading factor? Self-punishment?

Does he know, do you think? Neville asks Luna, who he has filled in on the situation without mentioning details. He couldn’t bear to write down details, has tried and has had to burn those letters. Everything is too dramatic or too 

I don’t think so, she writes back. You’re not as obvious as you think you are.

He can imagine what Snape would say if he knew, imagines differently every time he thinks about it. Either he’d say Neville is a teenager, that it’s natural that this would happen. He’d say it in a way that’s condescending and bothering and Neville would stand there and blush and fidget. Or he’d be angry, upset that he has invited Neville into his home and this is how he thinks of him. He’d throw shameful, upsetting words around, words like disgraceful and disrespectful. Worst case scenario, disgusting. 

There is of course a third option. That he would find it flattering. That he’d be inviting of it. Neville doesn’t dare think about that too hard, it’s too farfetched. He doesn’t know if he actually wants that to happen. There is a long way to go between fantasy and acting on that fantasy.

Maybe it’s the books he’s reading. Snape has a surprising amount of old muggle novels about love. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre. Classics, maybe. Maybe that’s why he has them. Neville has a hard time imagining Snape reading these books, about powerful emotions and destined love, clever young women and the men that want them, strong and dignified and complicated. He can’t imagine Snape having those kinds of troubles, those kinds of emotions, but he fantasizes about it anyway. He reads about Darcy and, in particular, Rochester, and can’t stop himself from imagining Snape like that. Snape’s face and his hands and his voice when those fictional men speak. It fits. Snape alone in a mansion, brooding and standoffish, but pure-hearted really. Good in the end. 

No, that’s not what he wants to think about.

He’s reading the last few chapters of Jane Eyre when he starts crying, embarrassingly enough. Embarrassing since he’s not alone, since he’s curled up in one of the sofas downstairs, Snape opposite him. Loud, gross snivels making Snape look up from his book, glare at him with pursed lips. 

“What?” Snape asks, a finger in the book he was reading. 

“Nothing,” Neville says, burrows deeper into the sofa, almost between the cushions now. 

“I’m neither blind nor deaf, it’s obviously something. What are you reading?”

“Jane Eyre,” Neville says, tries to lift the book so that Snape can’t see his red face. He’s always appreciated a good cry, at something harmless, but this isn’t the place for it. Years ago, he and Ginny sat up late, watching some adaptation of Jane Eyre on the television that her father had been tinkering with. He hadn’t cried then, but he does now. 

“What part?” 

Snape is being too interested, unusual for him. Usually he leaves Neville be, lets him be sad or happy or angry in peace. Like an indifferent husband towards “lady issues”, as his uncle sometimes calls it when his wife shows emotions. Maybe less insulting in this context. Usually Neville appreciates that, that he doesn’t try to intervene, or fix things that aren’t his to fix. 

“The ending, they’ve just reunited.”

“’Reader, I married him’?” Snape has put his book down now, is leaning forward slightly to peer at Neville. 

Snape saying it makes it somehow worse, and Neville lets out a sob and then quickly covers his mouth. “Sorry! Sorry, it’s just nice,” he says as Snape shakes his head. 

“’It’s nice’?” Snape says, not quite mocking him, just confused. 

“I can go somewhere else if it’s bothering you,” Neville gets out and Snape almost immediately shakes his head. 

“Finish the book. As I remember it, the rest of the chapter is tiresome rubbish about St. John.”

“You don’t like St. John?” Neville dares to lower the book enough to look at Snape properly now. 

“I don’t think he’d summon another bout of crying, even in you,” Snape says, almost diplomatic. “Do you like him? He’s very… hardworking. I could see the appeal, for you.”

Neville laughs, wipes at his eyes. “Why’s that?”

“He’s very disciplined, down to earth, practical. In contrast with Rochester, who certainly isn’t. And St. John isn’t quite as amoral.”

“You think I’m down to earth?”

Snape presses his lips together and then speaks slowly. “No, I’m simply saying that considering what I know of your personality and character you would perhaps be more inclined toward someone with a stronger sense of right and wrong, someone who perhaps doesn’t want to bend morals to suit his own pleasure.”

It’s a very long sentence and Neville has a hard time untwisting it. ‘What I know of your personality’. The stark realisation that other people have ideas and thoughts about you, that other people have an idea of who you are in their head. A version of Neville, inside Snape’s head. 

“You’re being awfully harsh on Rochester.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? The man imprisoned his own wife in the attic and then tried to engage in bigamy.”

“He’s not supposed to be likable. So you don’t think that it’s a good ending? You don’t think they should have gotten married.”

“I think…” Snape starts, like he’s talking to a child. “It’s not a very happy ending.”

“It is though! St. John doesn’t love Jane, he just thinks it’d be neat to bring her to India or whatever. He’s cold and hypocritical and honestly, he’s uptight and boring. I mean, yeah, Rochester is a bit of a… When you think about it, he has a lot of flaws. That doesn’t matter, though, does it? He’s a real person, he knows, um, he knows…” he gestures while he tries to find the right words, and the redness in his face doesn’t come from the crying now, but because he’s so fired up. “They love each other. Like, not regular love, but… You know, real love. Passion…” He trails off, doesn’t quite know what his point is, and Snape takes that opportunity to start talking, amused. 

“Real love? What’s your basis for this, are you speaking from experience?”

Neville stares at him, and what he feels for the strange question is closest to shock. Snape too, doesn’t seem comfortable, seems like he hadn’t expected himself to say that, or known what kind of answer the question inevitably would have.

“I… I, um. N-no,” Neville stutters, and then he pushes himself forward on the sofa, gestures when he talks, but calmer now, more composed. “What I mean is that they deserve each other. Jane can handle him, wants to handle him. He’s not perfect but neither is she, right?”

Snape seems to have withdrawn from the conversation now, only gives a shrug and a tilt of his head. It’s abrupt and awkward and Neville wants nothing more than to leave, go upstairs. He doesn’t though, he just sits there and finishes the book. When Snape leaves, quietly picks up his book and goes into the kitchen, starts making tea, Neville stares at the indentation of his body in the sofa cushions. He jogs upstairs before Snape can come back. 

\--

They hardly talk after that, not until Neville’s birthday later in the week. As Snape works downstairs, Neville makes a cake, not because it’s needed, but because it’s a ritual. He likes baking, usually bread and not sweet things. People expect him to like sweets and baked goods, but he really doesn’t, never has. But today, it’s a ritual, one he feels he has to respect. Some things have to stay the same. 

It’s a chocolate cake with berries – raspberries and blueberries and sugar and whipped cream. He doesn’t write anything on it, thinks that would be too silly. They don’t have candles either, but he doesn’t mind. He’s turning nineteen and is already quite tired of birthdays. Other people’s birthdays he enjoys, he like giving gifts and celebrating, but he’s never liked being the centre of attention. 

Snape surfaces at around six, looks tired and worn. He only glances at Neville as he walks past him, and Neville smiles at him anyway. 

“I’m making dinner tonight,” Neville says and Snape grunts in response, goes upstairs. He reappears maybe thirty minutes later, his hair wet and smelling like lavender. By then, Neville’s finished with dinner. It’s nothing much, salmon cooked in the oven with vegetables and potatoes and lemon. 

“You’ve been busy,” Snape remarks as he opens the fridge, sees the cake. A very neutral thing to say, and his tone of voice gives Neville no clues as to whether he thinks that’s positive or negative. 

“Um, yeah,” he says as he waves his wand, watches the plates hover into place at the kitchen table. “I thought, since it’s my birthday… We could have some cake, later.”

He says it so that Snape won’t feel awkward if he has forgotten, a gesture that he himself is slightly annoyed with. Why should he try to make Snape comfortable, when Snape doesn’t do the same for him? Why is he trying so hard, in general? They’re not 

“Mm,” Snape just says, opens the drawer with the cutlery and finishes setting the table. 

Snape eats very little, seems preoccupied with something. He’s shaved, and doesn’t look quite so tired anymore, but maybe he’s stressed? It feels like fumbling around for a light switch in the dark, trying to make sense of what Snape is feeling. Someday maybe he’ll find it and everything will be illuminated, everything will be crisp and clear. He doubts it. 

“Who taught you to cook?” Snape asks, at least trying. “To bake?”

Neville fidgets in his chair as he ladles food onto his plate, uncomfortable. “I don’t know. My grandmother, I guess. I’ve never been very good at magic, um, but cooking doesn’t take much magic skills. Just stirring and following the recipe. Like potions.”

“Potions do require magic. Once in a while,” Snape remarks, sounding bored. He hasn’t said happy birthday, and Neville doesn’t know if he expects him to. “And that’s strange considering your lack of skills in potion making.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Neville looks down at his food. The only noises now are the scraping of their forks on the plate. “You haven’t needed any help lately, with, um, the magic?”

Snape ignores him, chooses to not acknowledge it as a question. “I wouldn’t have thought your grandmother to be adept in the kitchen.”

Neville laughs. “No, she’s not. She collects a lot of recipes though.” She cuts them out of papers, has stacks of them in the kitchen cabinets. “Have you met my grandmother?”

“Once or twice,” Snape answers, doesn’t give any specific information. “We don’t quite share the same social circle, but she is a very,” Snape searches for the right word, “prominent figure in the wizarding community. She’s hard to avoid.”

“Yeah,” Neville just nods. 

What is Snape’s social circle? Death Eaters? Does he still, or did he ever, socialize with Death Eaters? Do they hate him now? A traitor, that’s what he must be to them. Is that part of the reason for the strong wards?

“Do you miss her?”

The question catches him off guard, both the earnest tone Snape has and the subject.

“Um. I think so,” he says and then changes his mind. That’s too honest. “Yes, I do.”

“And your parents?”

“What about them?”

“Do you miss them?”

Snape can’t be ignorant of what happened to his parents, but maybe he doesn’t know the whole story. Neville doesn’t shift, just looks at Snape. He used to have a hard time talking about his parents, didn’t want anyone to know. Not because he was ashamed, but because of the attention. He doesn’t want people to feel sorry either for himself or for them, that doesn’t seem fair to any of them, that doesn’t help him.

“I haven’t seen them for a while,” Neville just says, doesn’t know how else to answer the question. He always misses his parents, has ever since he can remember, lived in a constant state of missing them. 

Snape nods, like this was an expected answer. Neville would like to ask Snape something about his parents, about his family, but can’t come up with a question that wouldn’t be either nosy or insulting. So he sits there and eats, until both of their plates are empty. 

“Cake?” he asks, gets up to clear his plate and the serving dish. 

Snape shakes his head as he carries his plate to the sink, rinses it in silence. 

“Come on,” Neville coaxes. “It’s my birthday, you can’t let me eat cake all by myself.”

“I’ve always detested people that use their birthdays as leverage,” Snape says. They stand together in the kitchen, side by side, clearing the space and heaping dishes in the sink. 

“Yeah, okay, but it’s my birthday though,” Neville repeats, determined not to let Snape weasel his way out of this. 

“What sort of cake is it?” Snape sounds almost ready to give up. 

“Chocolate. Some other stuff,” Neville smiles. “You’ll have to find out when you eat it.”

“I’m allergic to chocolate.”

“No, you’re not,” Neville says, still with half a smile on his face. He sounds like he’s teasing, almost, a tone he never thought he’d have towards Snape. “If you really don’t want to eat it, that’s fine. I just, I made it for the both of us, I’ll have to throw a bunch away otherwise. But you know, that’s fine, I just-“

“Will you stop talking if I eat the cake?” 

“Yes,” Neville beams. He has already brought out the cake, started taking out plates. 

“In the living room,” Snape says and then he leaves, probably to start the fire. He seems to prefer to do that by hand. Maybe that’s something that comes with the scenery, the nature. Neville has found himself wanting to use less magic too, here. 

He cuts two medium slices, one on each plate, and balances that and two glasses into the living room. Snape is still on his knees by the fire and he sets it down where he usually sits and one where Neville usually sits, and then runs upstairs to grab the whiskey Harry brought him. He’s never been much for drinking but he might as well now. That seems like it comes with the scenery too. 

He's already a bit excited. This feels very adult, very mature. A glass of whiskey and a fire and a man. He blushes on his way down the stairs, has to take a second for his heart to stop flickering in his chest. That’s not what this is. 

He’s heard of guys who invite girls over, loosening them up with a drink. He’s heard all about it. That is definitely not what this is. Snape is not interested, Neville is not interested, not really. It’s a harmless fantasy. Also the scenery. It’s like a backdrop for something interesting, for something dramatic and large. That is not what this is, not what is going to happen. 

When he’s back, he holds the bottle out for Snape to look at. “Is this any good? Harry brought it for me, but I wouldn’t know, um, I’m not really a… Big drinker. Not that you are, you’re just, I mean, older.”

Snape takes the bottle from him and peers at it. “It’s fine,” he just says and hands it back. Neville pours them each a drink, then sips before setting his plate down in his lap.

“Happy birthday,” Snape says and Neville is, again, startled. “Would you like to toast?” he asks, with the air of someone indulging someone else. He is indulging him, isn’t he? Snape wouldn’t be doing this by choice. He wonders if this is another thing Harry told him to do, be nice to poor Neville on his birthday. 

They raise their glasses and lean forward, meet in the middle. The clink of their glasses sound important, like they’re doing something important. Like they are important. 

“A toast to…?” Snape asks, sips his drink. 

“A good year? A delicious cake?” Neville tries but nothing sounds right. “I don’t know.”

Snape tilts his head, makes a noise. He doesn’t offer another option. Neville then, like a creep, stares at Snape as he takes a bite of the cake. Shapes his mouth around the fork, licks his lips afterwards. He blushes again, maybe already a little warm from his sip of whiskey. 

“Is it good?” he asks and gets a single nod in response. 

\--

It’s that evening he hears a noise from his closet, faint and muffled. At first he panics, of course, still a little tipsy, still not quite there. He thinks about going back downstairs, fetching Snape, but decides that that’s too childish. He’s a grown man, he’s nineteen. And besides, Snape wouldn’t go up here and help him, wouldn’t want to leave the warmth of the fire and the comfort of the sofa.

So, alone, he opens the closet door, follows the noise. And then there is, in the bunched together clothes at the bottom of his closet, a flash of orange. He knows that orange. 

“Ginny?” he whispers and then louder, “Ginny?”

The noise stops, a noise he has recognized now as Ginny shouting ‘Hello’ over and over, at higher and higher volume. 

“Neville?” she says and he picks up the still wrapped piece of mirror that Harry gave him. 

“Oh,” he says, stupidly, feels like crying. “What’s this?”

“Harry is an idiot,” Ginny shouts. He can see a few strands of her red hair and one of her eyes. The hair is shorter now and she looks tough. She’s always looked tough, but now, with it cropped to above her ears, even more so. 

“What?” Neville asks, still doesn’t understand. 

“He didn’t tell you about the mirror, the idiot,” she says. “It’s a two-way mirror! Basically untraceable, it’s perfect.”

“Why, um, when did you-?” Neville stutters, sits down on his bed. He thinks about Ginny in his closet, hiding. There somehow, through everything. All those lonely nights, without sleep, she’s been here all the time. 

“It took us a while to get hold of the other mirror, but I’ve got it now,” she says. He sees a flash of her smile in the mirror shard, only about as big as his hand, thin and sharp. “We can talk now! Happy birthday, how are you?”

He wants to ask her about everything, wants her to materialize in this room so much that he feels he’s going to burst. He can remember the smell of her, the texture of the shirt she’s wearing, one of Ron’s old Chudley Cannons T-shirts.

“Ginny… I…” he says. This swell of emotion, in combination with how his head is swimming a tiny bit from the whiskey, makes it unreal. Is this a dream? Has he gone crazy?

“Hey,” she goes, voice softer now. “You okay?”

Neville laughs. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“Is everything going okay? What did you do today? Did you do something for your birthday? Did you like the whiskey?” she sounds almost out of breath, is talking quickly and excitedly. 

“I made a cake,” Neville says, curls up on the bed, back against the wall. “We had a cake, and we drank some of the whiskey.”

“You and Snape? How nasty is he being?” she asks, joking. 

“About the usual amount,” Neville answers, doesn’t know if that’s true or not. 

They talk well into the night. Ginny tells him about Luna, about her going off on some trip. They all seem to think that it’s crazy, that she’s crazy for going off like that, but Neville thinks it nice. She’s too big of a person not to do something like that. She talks about her family, about her and Harry. They seem serious now, more serious than any of his couple friends.

She tells him about his grandmother, too, and his relatives. They’re all fine, happy. He tells her, in turn, about the plants and what the house looks like. What it’s like living with Snape. It’s the best birthday present, the best he’s ever gotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it doesn't make sense timewise but i'd like to think the adaptation of jane eyre he and ginny watched was the one from 1997 with ciaran hinds and samantha morton where they kiss like their mouths are at opposite ends of a labyrinth and it's both horrible and very sweet. 
> 
> happy holidays, next update will be in 2018 probably so i'll see you then, hope this next year is good to you.


	4. there's not an iota of kindness in you

The fall creeps in on them, the land around them all of a sudden a completely different colour. Instead of the intense, breath-taking green, there is orange and brown and yellow, some red. It feels like it happens over night, but of course not. With the cold comes some sort of clarity. He works in the garden with a newfound energy, harvests some things, brings flowers into the house. It looks more alive now, less like a stack of things. They spend more time together in the living room, Snape finishes work earlier. Mostly for the warmth, Neville thinks, but maybe for the company as well, now that it’s getting darker outside. 

He wonders whether he should tell Snape about the mirror, but in the end he keeps it to himself. They have certain days now, certain times when they talk. Sometimes Ron is there in the background, sometimes Harry or Hermione is there. Mostly it’s just Ginny, and he likes that best. He finds that at first it’s hard to talk to her, after that initial gush of news. It’s like he has forgotten how to interact with a normal person, someone not quite as difficult as Snape. He feels he’s either too pushy or worries that he seems to uninterested when she talks, but she doesn’t seem to mind. 

For the first time, he thinks of the time he’s spending here with Snape as something permanent. Even if he gets out of here tomorrow, he will still have been here for months now. He will still carry this with him, it still shapes him. 

Talking to Ginny helps with his crush. It helps get things in perspective. He doesn’t tell her, of course not. She would think he’s going crazy. Maybe he is, but she doesn’t need to worry about it. Luna has kept his secret, as he knew she would, and Ginny and the rest of them are clueless. Anyhow, he doesn’t feel it as strongly now, isn’t as limited in human contact. That was all it was, just the isolation, the emotional dependency he’s had with Snape. That’s it.

That’s why, when Harry visits, he says yes to his suggestion. The suggestion of Legilimency, to help him remember who attacked him, what he looked like, if he said anything. The three of them sit in the kitchen, drinking coffee and Harry seems subdued. Crestfallen, his grandmother would say. He starts talking about it almost at once, almost as soon as he’s entered the door, brushed off the mud from his boots and taken his coat off. 

“Do you think that’s something you could do?” he asks both of them at the same time, talks to them as a unit. Neville supposes they are now. 

“I would prefer not to,” Snape says and Neville is almost offended. If anyone should have reservations about this it should be Neville. He’s the one who is going to be opened up, penetrated. Metaphorically. 

Harry nods, like he’s thinking it over. “Does the problem lie with those issues you’ve been having with your magic?”

“Don’t talk about it like that, you know what happened, you know why I-“ Snape says, alarmingly aggressive, speaking in that quiet, menacing tone of his. He stops abruptly, flattens his robes and corrects his posture.

“I know,” Harry says, sounds sad. That’s not a good tactic, Neville thinks in passing. Like he’s the expert on how to handle Snape now. But who likes pity?

“What’s the rush?” Neville asks, tries to change the focus. “Why now, did something happen?”

Harry seems to chew on the inside of his cheek, talks very carefully. “There was an incident with your grandmother,” he says and Neville’s heart pounds in his chest, his ears. “She’s fine!” Harry exclaims, must see the worry, the panic in his face. 

His breathing is starting to get heavy, but he controls it. He’s in control. 

“She’s not hurt, but she’s had to go into hiding. I don’t know where she is, she wanted it that way.” That sounds like Neville’s grandmother. Independent, is a nice word for it. “But she’s safe, Neville,” Harry ends, presses on the word safe. 

Neville nods, doesn’t want to open his mouth right away, doesn’t know what noise will slip out. No, she can handle this, he tells himself. 

“She wasn’t attacked, they just ransacked her house, wrote some stuff on the walls.”

‘Just’. And what stuff? What stuff could they have written on the walls that made his grandmother want to leave her house? 

“Okay,” Neville says, finally. He looks at Snape for the first time in this conversation. “If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine.”

“No, I don’t want to do it,” Snape says, stern and serious. Neville shrugs. 

“There you go, Harry,” he says, tries to not sound so angry. He’s not succeeding. 

When Harry has left, he stomps around the kitchen, starts to brew tea even though they’ve just had coffee. Snape sits at the kitchen table, tries to seem uninterested until he can’t anymore, slams the kitchen cabinet shut in Neville’s face. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, quiet and heated. 

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Oh good, I was worried,” Snape answers sarcastically, stands off to the side while Neville struggles to fill the pot, water sloshing everywhere. 

“I’m saying, it’s not your problem.”

“Apparently it is my problem since it’s my kitchen you’re decimating.”

“I’m hardly decimating anything,” Neville snaps and then gives up, slumps together against the kitchen counter. He brings his hands up to his face, pressed the flats of his palms into his eyes. “I…” he starts. “Harry should have told me sooner. He’s had plenty of chances. He should have told me right away.”

He can’t see Snape but he can feel his body heat, a presence hovering just out of reach, somewhere to the left of him. 

“He gave me a stupid two-way mirror,” Neville says and opens his eyes. Snape isn’t looking at him, but gazes out across the kitchen. “He could have contacted me, is my point. He could have come here earlier.”

Snape still doesn’t say anything, so Neville turns around, fiddles with the kettle. “I just…”

He can’t tell Snape what he feels because he’s not entirely sure himself. And because he doubts Snape would care. There’s an anger inside him, born from this terrible desperate helplessness. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead of trying to explain. “Like I said, I’m not mad at you. It’s childish of me to act out, I know.”

He turns to Snape and gives him a forced smile, which Snape does not return. His hands are calmer now, his breathing normal. 

“It’s not childish,” Snape murmurs, quietly. 

Neville closes his eyes again, because the way Snape says it sounds like a feather quill stroking his cheek, soft and delicate and almost tender. 

“Are you still willing to try Legilimency?” Snape asks, still so quiet and calm. “I can’t promise you it will work, but we can try.”

Neville wonders when this happened. When did Snape become someone to step out of his comfort zone for him, for Neville? He has no idea what goes on in Snape’s head, none at all. Are they friends? Does Snape enjoy his company? Is he, like he has suspected, like a pet to Snape, like some lower form of intelligence, something to tolerate only if it helps keep the rats out of the basement and doesn’t claw the sofa? 

“I’m willing to try.”

They decide to do it in the evening, and so when the sun goes down, Neville finds himself, nervous on the sofa. Opposite him is an empty chair they’ve brought in from the kitchen, where Snape will soon sit and probe into his head, his thoughts. 

It’s clinical and still, like a dentist’s appointment or a business meeting. The furthest thing from Neville’s mind is Snape finding out he had some slightly confused, troubling fantasies several weeks ago. 

“Can I drink some whiskey first?” Neville asks. “Some courage, or something?”

“It’s best if your head is clear,” Snape says from where he stands by the fire. He has his wand in his hand, the first time during these last months that Neville can remember seeing him with it. “Do you understand the risks?” he asks, so serious that Neville has to laugh. Snape, whose magic troubles Neville may have severely underestimated, is going to poke into his head. 

“Yeah,” Neville mumbles as Snape sits down in the chair, leans forward. “Yeah, I guess.”

Snape seems to take that as a definite yes and he rolls his sleeves up, sits with his legs wide apart, planted firmly on the floor. Like this, he towers over Neville’s who is sunken into the sofa, seems huge and powerful. It’s comforting. 

“Are you ready?” Snape asks, the arm with his wand slightly raised. Neville nods. “Look at me,” Snape says and then, “Legilimens.”

It’s like sinking into a cold bath. Around him he can only feel the swirling of something, something like water or smoke, cold and uninviting. He comes up for air, and the room in front of him materializes, Snape materializes. 

“Oh God, I think I’m gonna throw up,” he gets out, twists in his seat. 

“We’ll try again. I’m rusty,” Snape says, a bit less calmly now. There’s a single bead of sweat on his forehead. Without warning he says the spell again and Neville sinks down again into this swirling mass of nothing and everything. This time it lasts longer. He can feel Snape too, somewhere in the confusion. Clear and dark like a snake, cold and smooth like a snake. 

Slowly, memories start to surface, envelop him. He tries to help him along, tries to coax those memories to the surface and then suddenly, with what seems like a rushing of air all around him, he’s in his body again, fully there again. 

“Don’t,” Snape says, before Neville has realised where he is and what’s happening. Snape is breathing harshly now, his grip on his wand strained. His arm looks sinewy, the muscles and the skin barely holding onto the bone. Everything feels a little off, like Neville is still there, in the swirling mass of his own thoughts. 

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to help. Just sit there,” Snape says and lays one heavy hand on Neville’s knee. Not to comfort him but more to steady himself it seems like, or to keep Neville from standing up and leaving. “Again. Legilimens.”

This time it’s different, this time there’s no dark smoke, Neville is just thrust straight into something, a memory. He’s there, Snape is there, although he wasn’t the first time Neville lived this. It’s not a recent memory, not at least in Neville’s head. It’s the Yule Ball. 

He can feel Ginny’s hands on his shoulder, like it’s real, like he’s living it again. He can feel the happiness, the exhilaration at being there. Not just like he’s thinking about it, like it’s distant, but like he’s actually there. And then not, and then somewhere completely different. He’s fighting now, he’s throwing curses behind himself, his body aching, his head hurting. He’s running fast, the air rushing past him. His legs won’t hold anymore. Soon, he’ll crumble, be caught by the Death Eaters throwing curses at him, be thrown to the ground. His breathing echoes in his head, his heart beating so fast he thinks it’ll break. 

And then nothing. And then ripped out of it, all of it, by a sound, a pained sort of wrecked roar. It takes him a moment to realise it comes from Snape, leaning forward onto his knees, his head in his hands. 

That feeling from the battle is still there. The battle of Hogwarts. He remembers now, when and where, distanced and unmoved by it. No one is chasing him, no one is coming for him. 

“Are you okay?” Neville asks, and when he moves to put a hand on Snape’s arm, his body feels strange, like it’s too big or too grounded, like there shouldn’t be this much gravity holding him down. 

Snape bats his hand away almost violently, shakes his head. His whole body. 

“Hey,” Neville goes, doesn’t try to touch him again. Panic is rising up inside him again, like the tide. Like it was just a matter of time before he was underwater again. What does he do if he needs to get Snape help? Who can he get help from? 

Snape lets out a sound, like a waterfilled groan. “Don’t touch me,” he says and Neville leans back in his seat even more, stops hovering. 

“I’m not going to,” he says. “You’re okay, right? Please, could you tell me what’s-“

Snape stands up at that, wobbly as he gets to his feet. He’s trying to be unmoved, Neville realises, and looks away. Ashamed, like he has seen something he definitely shouldn’t have seen, something too intimate, too naked.

Snape doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at him, just stands there with his eyes closed and one hand on the back of the chair. His knuckles are white. 

Neville leaves the room. Nothing else seems right, everything else would seem like an intrusion and he knows Snape would hate that. He pretends like he’s getting a glass of water for himself, calls out and asks if Snape wants one too. He gets no response and when he returns to the living room he finds that Snape has made it up the stairs, disappeared into the dark second floor. 

\--

He pretends like nothing happened. They both do. In the morning when he gets up, Snape’s door is still closed but when he knocks on the door in the floor of the kitchen, he gets an irritated shout of “What?” back and knows Snape isn’t lying in his bed still, hurt. He gets up, eventually, has snuck food from the kitchen Neville notices when he gets back in from the garden.

That’s the thing, it looked physical, that pain. Sounded physical. Neville keeps wondering, in the following days, if it’s like that because Snape is out of practice, or because Snape’s magic really is that bad. Then the most horrible option slides into his head – what if he did something wrong? Snape told him not to try to help, but maybe he did anyway, without thinking. Maybe it’s his fault. 

And then one morning Snape doesn’t get out of bed. It’s almost embarrassing how long it takes for Neville to realise, he goes well into the afternoon without understanding that Snape hasn’t left his bedroom. He’s had to make his own coffee, but sometimes Snape drinks all of it before Neville is even up. He doesn’t see him for lunch, but he rarely does. It might be in the back of his head as he work in the garden, that something isn’t right. At least that’s what he thinks afterward, that he knew, somehow, that something was wrong. 

When he doesn’t see him in the afternoon, when Snape usually appears from out the door in the floor, then he acts. Then the unease bubbling under the surface all day rises and he cautiously knocks on Snape’s bedroom door. 

He gets no response and knocks one more time. Nothing. He calls out tentatively, “Snape?” and then there is a low grumbling from the other side of the door. 

“Are you okay?” Neville asks, and gets nothing but some shuffling. “Can you tell me you’re okay, please?”

He waits for a whole minute, stands there in the silence and waits. “I’m gonna open the door, okay? Don’t get mad at me.”

He mumbles a quiet Alohomora and tries the door handle, slowly pushes against the door and it swings open. 

The room is dark, the curtains are closed. It smells stuffy. Neville has never been in here, never even been given a peek through the open door – Snape always, always keeps it closed. He feels like he’s trespassing and his pulse is skyrocketing.

“I’m coming in,” he declares, loud enough for Snape to hear him he hopes, and then there’s something from the bundle in the bed. “I can’t hear you, I’m still coming in.”

There’s something small about words like neat and tidy, and Neville doesn’t think that’s right. There’s nothing small about the room or its contents. In the middle of the room, the headboard against one of the walls, a large bed sits. Everything is clean. The rugs that are all over the house are nowhere to be found here, and the wooden floor looks naked and cold. There are no paintings on the walls, hardly any place where there could be paintings or pictures. Here too there are bookcases, and one wall is entirely windows, which Neville can imagine offer a spectacular view of the outside hills when the curtains aren’t drawn. 

He calls out again, “Snape?” and the shape in the bed moves. 

“Don’t,” he hears, faintly and muffled. 

“What do you want me to do?” Neville asks, more to himself than to Snape. He creeps closer to the bed, strains his eyes to try to see Snape in the dim light. 

“Don’t come in here,” Snape says and his voice sounds hoarse. The shape on the bed slowly becomes vertical as Snape pushes himself up to a sitting position. 

“Too late,” Neville says and Snape turns his head to face him, drags a hand across his face. He looks tired, he looks like he’s been sleeping the whole day. 

“Get out,” he says, voice still raspy.

“What’s wrong? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Get out!” Snape shouts, loud and angry. Neville hesitates, takes a step back towards the open door. His sweaty hands form determined fists at his sides. 

“You haven’t been out of bed all day, I was getting worried.”

“Worried?” Snape laughs.

“Yes, I’m worried,” Neville says, determined not to let Snape scare him. “Let me help you.”

“You can’t help me,” Snape spits.

“I can try.” Neville’s weak voice barely carries.

“Why are you worried? What right do you have to be worried?” Snape says, slowly sinks forward onto his knees. The covers slide off him and Neville can see his torso, pale and in shadow. He’s not wearing anything on his upper body and Neville can see the scar. In this light, it’s pretty, almost beautiful. A small landscape, rough and uneven. 

He might have stared, and when he looks up again, Snape is sneering at him.

“We share a… We-we live together,” Neville says, his voice shaky. He knows he’s made a mistake as soon as he’s said it. 

Snape laughs again, hollow and angry. “We live together. Hm.”

Neville takes a step forward and like a slap, Snape starts talking again. 

“I know,” he says. “I know and it’s pathetic. It’s sad,” he says and Neville stares at him. His lungs are heavy and hard in his chest. “Do you think we’re even remotely on the same level? You’re nothing to me,” Snape growls. 

As he talks he tries to stand up, clutching the covers to his chest. It doesn’t work, and he wobbles backwards, sits down in the bed again. He coughs, loud and rough. 

Neville closes his eyes and presses his lips together. Okay. 

“Get up,” he says to Snape, takes a step towards him where he unsteadily sits on the bed. Snape reaches a hand out, to stop him or to push him away, but he doesn’t. The hand just hovers there, between them, until Neville pushes it aside. “What’s wrong with you?”

Snape says nothing until Neville pushes at his shoulder, right below the scar. His skin is cold and clammy. 

“I’m not asking you as a joke because I don’t care why you act like this. I am asking you politely what is wrong with you and what I can do to help,” Neville says, his voice shaky and anger tugging at him. 

Snape is quiet, glares at him from behind a curtain of dirty, black hair. 

“Okay,” Neville sighs. “Well, you haven’t eaten all day, right, so I’m going to get you something to eat,” he says and then leaves the room, leaves the door open. 

As he makes Snape a sandwich, his hands shake so much that he has to put down the plate and calm down before he can carry it upstairs. It’s not from fear, although that had spiked up before. Now he’s just angry. Snape has no right talking to him like that, he has no right to say that to him. But he’s not going to sit downstairs and let Snape waste away just because he’s angry. 

When he gets back with the sandwich and a glass of water Snape is still sitting on the side of the bed, still with his head in his hands. 

“Here,” Neville goes, and puts the plate down on the bed next to him. He turns his back and pulls apart the curtains. Outside, the sun is about to set, the sky is slowly turning orange and pink. 

Then he sits down in the armchair in the corner, glares at Snape who just sits there, hunched over. He looks like an animal, cowering in a cage. 

“Are you going to sit there?” Snape finally says, drags the plate closer to him on the bed. 

“Yeah, I’m going to sit here and watch you eat,” Neville says. You’re acting like a toddler, he wants to say, but doesn’t. It won’t help anything except maybe make him feel better for a few seconds. He screams it in his head though, screams to him that if he acts like a child he’s going to get treated like one.

He reluctantly takes a bite out of the sandwich, chews carefully. Neville is struck, all of a sudden, with how strange it is, the situation. If he’d laid this scene out for a sixteen year old version of himself, for example, how incredibly bizarre this would seem. 

“Are you going to ask me about it now? Do we have to talk about it?” He pronounces talk like it’s poison, like it burns in his mouth. 

“No,” Neville says, defeated and sad. He has his knees drawn up to his chest, is hugging his legs. Suddenly he doesn’t want to look at Snape anymore and turns to look at the sky instead, enormous and unending from this perspective. 

Snape eats, quietly and thoroughly, until there’s nothing left on the plate and then gulps down the whole glass of water. 

“Happy?” he sneers, and Neville can’t believe he ever thought Snape was anything other than a bitter old man. 

“Go take a shower,” he says and then stands by the door until Snape gets the message and stands up on unsteady legs. Neville doesn’t touch him, knows that if he reached out his hand to steady him Snape wouldn’t take it. So he stands there, follows behind Snape all the way to the bathroom. 

“I think I can manage now,” Snape says, a little less cocky than before and Neville nods. 

“Great. I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he tells him and then stands outside the bathroom, back to the door, and listens to the water start running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title for this chapter is from the magnetic fields' song reno dakota. 
> 
> everything is bleak right now but everything gets better!


	5. some of us can only live in bubbles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the magnetic fields' song my only friend. 
> 
> sorry for the delay in posting, hope you like this chapter, which is a bit less of a drag than the last one!

Neville has no idea how far north they are, but in mid-October, the first snow arrives, sprinkles the grass outside with a fine, sugary coating of glistening snow. The plants are fine, so far, and the snow soon melts, but soon his spells won’t hold all winter. He’ll have to give them up to the cold, or bring them inside. He hasn’t decided what to do yet.

 

The whole of September has been a blur, a mess of bitter silences and Snape half-heartedly ignoring his own shitty behaviour. Neville hates it. Hates that he doesn’t want to talk to Ginny or Harry about it, hates that he still wants to keep it private. The whole ugly ordeal.

 

 _I’ve been an idiot,_ he writes to Luna. _I never should have thought_

 

After that he doesn’t know what to write. He crosses the sentence out and instead writes that he’s miserable. _Why won’t he just act like a normal person? Why can’t he just make it easy?_

 

Snape doesn’t spend any more days in bed and has started working again. Slowly, he has seemed to get better, started eating more and spending more time in front of the fire in the living room. He seems like he wants to pretend like nothing happened, like he didn’t say those nasty things to Neville, that he didn’t have some sort of breakdown. They don’t sit down and eat together. Snape tries one night, leaves leftovers on the counter for him, but Neville ignores it. He’s back to a diet of cereal and fruit and sandwiches.

 

He won’t tell Neville what it was about, of course he won’t. He’s the most stubborn man Neville has ever met. He has started to piece it together though.

 

Neville doesn’t join him anymore, doesn’t sit and read with him in the warmth. He’s put a warming charm on his bed upstairs and spends his evenings there, reading alone. He has dug out a book of poetry from the back of a bookshelf, Emily Dickinson, and reads the poems over and over, every line several times. Again, there is that creeping boredom. The isolation now is almost tangible, he can almost feel it nagging at him at night. They’ve stopped talking almost altogether.

 

He misses it. Misses talking with people in general, not just with Snape. As the school year has begun, all of his friends at home have gotten busier which means they don’t talk as often. He feels forgotten, like a pair of old shoes in the back of the closet. Luna is on the road now, travelling with her father, and he hasn’t heard back from her. Maybe his letters haven’t gotten through to her, maybe she’s just been too busy.

 

It’s on one of his loneliest nights he sees them, the hikers.

 

First just lights, moving in the sparse gathering of trees below them, then shapes, moving slowly but surely up the hill. It’s exhilarating, almost like the panic he knows so well. He can’t take his eyes off them.

 

He moves downstairs, pulls on his coat and his boots and go outside, sits on the porch and stares at them. There seems to be three of them, maybe coming from the little town, maybe tourists. For a moment he thinks that maybe it’s Harry, maybe it’s Harry and Ginny and Luna, coming to rescue him, but of course it’s not. Then he thinks that maybe they’ve found him, those people who want to hurt him. Maybe they’ve traced the food deliveries, or the two-way mirror, somehow figured it out. At least then something would happen to him, at least then he wouldn’t be hidden away here in this limbo.

 

When he feels his hands starts to hurt from the cold he leaves the porch, thinks that maybe some walking will get the blood moving. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks down the hill, down toward the edge of the protective barrier separating him from these people, from people in general.

 

It's just a step. Just a little step and they would be able to see him. He hears one of them laughing, the sound echoing off the ground towards him, the very sky reverberating with it. How long has it been since he heard someone laugh like that, without scorn and bitterness?

 

From their perspective he would appear out of nowhere. Maybe they wouldn’t see him at first. It’s dark out, he would not be able to see them without those flashlights they carry. He knows they must be muggles now because the light is too cold, too unwavering. He hasn’t got one of those lights, and they wouldn’t see him straight away. There would be plenty of time to change his mind.

 

Their path has started to lead them away from the house, turning off to the right in a great curve around the house and into the woods behind it. Soon, the trees will shield them, he won’t be able to see them anymore. He takes a step.

 

It feels like he has pulled apart a veil, stepped out from under a rushing of water. He can hear clearer, he can see better. The night sky is clear and his face hurts from the cold. This is, of course, all in his head. For him, there is no difference. It’s the hikers that can’t see him, he’s the one hiding.

 

Something pulls at him, pulls him back within the wards.

 

“Are you stupid?” Snape asks, his voice angry and loud. “Are you insane?”

 

No, I’m lonely, Neville wants to tell him. He doesn’t say anything, tugs his arm out of Snape’s grip.

 

“What are you doing?” Snape says again, gestures at him like the thing he really wants to do with his hands is hit him.

 

“There are hikers down there,” Neville says quietly. He turns away, looks out over the open space. They’re still there, slowly but surely still making their way forward.

 

“I know, I saw,” Snape says incredulously.

 

Knowing that Snape has seen his transfixed walk out into nothingness should make him nervous but it doesn’t. He doesn’t feel anything but this longing to follow those people, to walk away. He sits down on the ground, blinks slowly. His head hurts.

 

“Go inside,” Neville mumbles when Snape doesn’t move. The hikers disappear slowly into the dark of the woods.

 

“No. Not if you’re going to-“

 

“I’ll be in in a bit,” Neville whispers, sad and tired. So tired. He could lie down on the frozen ground right now and fall asleep.

 

Snape sits down too, next to him on the stiff grass. He laughs then, the noise starting out as almost a sob and then builds into a desperate chuckling roar. It fills him up, warms the inside of his skull.

 

“I’m sorry,” Snape says, his voice sounding so small out here. He’s so small.

 

“It’s alright,” Neville answers, not sure if he wants an answer, not sure if he cares.

 

“No, you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. I’m sorry that I-“

 

“I understand, I know,” Neville interrupts, leans his head on his knees to look at Snape. The dark hair is tied back in a knot again and he’s shivering, his arms tucked tightly against his body. He’s not wearing a coat. Neville smiles. “Come on, you’re going to freeze to death. We can talk about it inside.”

 

Neville pushes off from the ground and reaches a hand out to Snape who takes it, pulls himself up too. It’s, the third time maybe that Neville has touched Snape without a layer of clothing between them. Snape’s hand is rough and thin and cold.

 

When they get inside, Snape makes tea, pushes Neville into a chair. Neville is enjoying this role reversal. This is more of what it should be right? Snape taking care of him, making sure he’s warm and safe. Not happy, maybe. That would be a stretch even for Neville’s imagination.

 

Snape pours a glass of whiskey for himself, sips it as he waits for the water to boil.

 

“Why do you live here?” Neville asks, maybe just to ask something.

 

“I like it,” Snape answers, but they both know that’s a lie. Maybe Snape tells himself he’s the sort of person who should want to live out here, nowhere. Snape is with his back to him, and Neville can see his arms move as he unpacks the teabag, can imagine his fingers swiftly working.

 

“No,” he just says, leaves the word hanging in the air where it will float down, heavy and final.

 

“No, I guess not,” Snape murmurs, still with his back turned. “My magic now is,” he pauses. “Erratic. It lashes out. I hurt someone.”

 

Neville listens intently, stares at the back of Snape’s head. He fears that if Snape turns around now, something will change, something will be made permanent.

 

“This is where I should be.” Snape pours the warm water into the cup, adds honey. He knows Neville likes his tea with honey. “It’s difficult. For me. Some days it’s fine, other days I can’t do the simplest spells. Do you know what that is like? Missing.”

 

He says only that word, missing. Just missing, a feeling too large to pin down with a more specific term. Yes, Neville knows that.

 

“I pushed myself before. I shouldn’t have done that,” Snape continues and as he talks he turns around, puts the tea down in front of Neville. His hand lingers on the cup, like he wants the warmth to stay with him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. We can try again.”

 

“I’m not mad at you because you couldn’t help me. I’m not…” Neville has started to say that he’s not mad at all, but he is. He’s so very mad. But more than that he’s tired. “You can’t talk to me like that without consequences. I’m not a kid anymore, you can’t bully me and I’m not going to leave you to rot just because you’re rude to me.”

 

Snape listens to him, seems to in any case. He nods.

 

“Good,” Neville nods too. “Great.”

 

“I…” Snape draws the word out long and thoughtful and hesitant. “I said some unnecessary things.”

 

Sad and pathetic. Nothing to him. That’s what he called him. Neville remembers. Neville wants him to say it again, say those words Snape now feels too ashamed to repeat to his face.

 

Neville just nods, lets him sit in the silence. He won’t say sorry for that, Neville doesn’t expect him to, but he’s fine with making Snape just a little bit uncomfortable.

 

“It would be unfortunate if you found your stay here unpleasant,” Snape says. “I can try to be more… accommodating.”

 

“And what does that mean? Accommodating?” Neville pushes. When Snape makes a face, he continues, “I mean, what does that entail? Are you going to act differently? In what way?”

 

“What do you want? How do you want me to act?”

 

Neville splays his hand out on the table, looks at that instead of at Snape’s face. He’s looking so lost. To use a big word, a word that Snape would probably use, he looks forlorn. “I think we should eat together. Like we did before, I cook and you do the dishes. And the other way around.”

 

Snape doesn’t make a sound and Neville doesn’t want to look at him, so he continues. “I’d like to help you with your potions. Now when it’s getting colder, I’ll have to bring in most of the plants, put them in the cellar to rest during the winter. I won’t have anything to do. How does that sound?”

 

He glances up at Snape who nods, his face serious. Like it’s a business proposition.

 

“And let me help you if you’re,” Neville pauses. “If you need it. Alright?”

 

Snape nods again, head bowed.

 

“I’d like you to say it. Do you agree?”

 

“Yes. Do I get to make demands?”

 

“Yes. Of course.”

 

He shouldn’t have said that maybe. He doesn’t know what to expect at all. But then, he can always refuse, can’t he?

 

“We have to go fetch firewood at some point. To get us through winter,” Snape starts, slowly. “Perhaps you could help me with that. It would be easier with magic.”

 

“Of course.”

 

And then, after a moment, Snape mumbles, “A heating spell for my room, could you do that?”

 

Neville hadn’t thought of it before. He should have already done it. He blushes, ashamed that Snape has to ask. “Yes, of course.”

 

“Good. It’s settled then.”

 

“I reserve the right to make further demands,” Neville’s voice is an echo of Snape’s seriousness, the formality of it.

 

“Of course,” Snape, in turn, echoes and his eyes are soft, like he would smile if he were another person.

 

\--

 

Neville talks to Harry about it, finally. He doesn’t mention that they had a bit of a fight, or that Snape had such a bad reaction to the Legilimency spell, but he does say that they tried it and that it didn’t work. Maybe he alludes to Snape being in a bad way.

 

“You should have told me,” he says into the mirror, sitting on the porch of the house in the afternoon greyness. “You should have told me why Snape was here.”

 

“I didn’t think it was my place to say,” Harry tells him, his forehead furrowed. He’s worried and Neville lets him be.

 

“No, I guess not. But what if his magic had lashed out, or whatever. He told me he hurt someone,” Neville mumbles. He probably doesn’t have to keep his voice down, but he can hear Snape moving around in the kitchen inside, making dinner. He doesn’t want him to hear this, that they’re talking about him.

 

“He hurt me,” Harry explains reluctantly and for a second Neville doesn’t know what to say.

 

“He didn’t tell me that.”

“No, he wouldn’t, would he?” Harry sighs. “It wasn’t serious. I was there at the hospital to give him back his wand, he was upset, he tried a spell and it backfired. No one was hurt badly, he just knocked me over a bit, cracked some windows. It’s really not as serious as he makes it out to be.”

 

Neville looks over his shoulder into the kitchen, sees the back of Snape’s head. He moves to a part of the porch that is further away, to the bench, naked without its usual cushions.

 

“Look, Neville. In the end, he’s the one choosing to be there.” Harry’s voice is tired. Neville doesn’t envy him. Having to look after all these people, even after the war. It’s a lot of responsibility, and Harry has always wanted to save everyone. “Or, I don’t mean it like that. I just… He doesn’t have to be such a recluse, but I suppose he wants it that way.”

 

Does Harry have some deeper knowledge of Snape’s mind, his thoughts and feelings? Or can Neville claim that he’s the one who knows what’s good for Snape, what Snape actually wants? Harry and Snape have always seemed linked, a link Neville envies now. It’s not just that they’ve obviously had more serious conversations than Neville and Snape, it’s the implied intimacy of those conversations. Neville knows Snape hates to be weak, to be helped, and yet he’s allowed Harry to see him be weak, to help him. And there is Harry’s parents and their connection to him. The fact that they’re both such complicated people. Neville isn’t very complicated, not very deep. He’s just himself, nothing grand about it. They share a lot, and Neville doesn’t like to be reminded of it.

 

Although Harry hasn’t lived with him, Harry doesn’t know those little twitches and movements of the muscles in his face and what they mean. Does he?

 

“Maybe,” Neville answers, tired now too. “Can I help him somehow? Do you know what the healers said?”

 

Harry hesitates for so long that Neville thinks something might be wrong with the mirror for a second. “Don’t tell him I told you this but the healers said it’s probably not completely physical. Or well, it is physical, but you know. That it might be a little bit in his head, psychosomatic. Or you know, that his mood makes it worse than it is.”

 

Neville bites his lip, wishes Harry wouldn’t have told him. No, wishes he wasn’t in a position to ask at all.

 

“I won’t tell him,” Neville says, at the same time someone calls Harry’s name, on the other end of the mirror.

 

Harry seems to tilt the mirror downward and say something, a terse reply. Neville hears a door close.

 

“I have to go,” Harry says as his face comes into view again. “I’ll talk to you on Thursday, yeah? Everyone says hi.”

 

“Yeah. Bye,” Neville smiles, and then nothing but blackness can be seen in the mirror, Harry must have wrapped the mirror up again, put it away.

 

He sits there for a bit, until Snape opens the door, calls him in for dinner. Thinking. It feels bad to talk about Snape behind his back, like there’s a heavy rock in his stomach, weighing him down. He can’t say he feels sorry for him but he feels sympathy. It’s a different thing. He doesn’t feel that he can make a judgement on whether or not Snape deserves this. He can only recognize it.

 

\--

 

“Is it always this cold up here?”

 

They’re both bundled up in coats and scarves and mittens, Snape walking ahead of Neville into the forest behind the house. The wards reach well within the forest and in this part of the woods they won’t run into anyone. It’s just them.

 

“I would assume. I didn’t live here this time last year, although it was cold when I arrived in January,” Snape says. When he speaks, the words form little puffs of steam in the air, like smoke.

 

“Oh, right,” Neville says. He tries to do the math in his head, and the conclusion that Snape has spent as much time here alone as he has with Neville is strange.

 

They’ve brought the axe with them and a small wire saw. They probably won’t need it, but just in case. The air is crisp and cold and every step brings with it a crunch from the hard, frosty leaves and vegetation on the ground.

 

Neville feels like a toddler – pressed into all these clothes he can barely breathe, and Snape looks close to majestic with his hair let out and his dark coat buttoned all the way up to his chin. Luckily it doesn’t take them long to find a good tree, they’ve only walked this far to be sure that the tree couldn’t possibly fall towards the house. Neville uses a spell Snape demonstrates for him. Neither of them are experts at this, and it’s mostly guesswork.  There’s a lot magic can do though, and the tree goes down easily, as Neville works and Snape stands off to the side. He didn’t need to come really, but insisted in his own quietly stubborn way. He said he wasn’t going to come looking for him if he tripped and fell in the woods and if nobody found him, Neville would probably freeze to death. Then he had raised his eyebrows and Neville had shrugged, happy for the company really. Maybe Snape is glad to be able to tell someone what to do for once too.

 

“It’s a pity we can’t Apparate within the wards,” Neville says as he looks at the tree, now horizontal and looking larger than when it was standing upright. It will be difficult to bring it back to the house like this.

 

“Hmm,” Snape murmurs in agreement. “I think we’ll have to split it into smaller parts and then levitate it back to the house.”

 

“Do you want to try?” Neville says, trying not to sound too perky.

 

Snape straightens up. “I didn’t bring my wand.”

 

“Here, use mine.” Neville takes two steps towards him and reaches out his wand, shaft first.

 

“No, thank you. I’d rather not,” Snape politely declines and starts instead to cut the branches from the log with the wire saw.

 

Neville thinks about pushing, but decides against it. It wouldn’t help, not if Snape doesn’t want to do it. “Okay, sure,” he just says, and does it himself. He starts to separate the tree up in six parts, six logs about as thick as his waist and reaching up to his knees.

 

“What’s on the other side of the woods?” Neville asks, not to fill the silence. Just because he likes to talk, and because today Snape has seemed in a good mood.

 

“More trees,” is his succinct answer and Neville chuckles. He’s beginning to get quite warm now, moving the wood around.

 

“Yeah, I mean after that. The trees have to stop somewhere.”

 

“There forest continues over the crest of this hill and on the other side there are some cabins, a road. Not inhabited usually, mostly summer homes, I would assume.”

 

“I wish we could go meet our neighbours, don’t you?” he asks, bent down to separate another piece from the tree, clear the thin branches from it. When Snape doesn’t answer, he continues. “Maybe I’ve just made this picture in my head of neighbourly camaraderie, though. Going over to a neighbour and borrowing a cup of sugar and all that, it has always seemed so cosy.”

 

He straightens up and turns around, finished, and rubs his dirty mittens together to shake off some of the bark and dirt. As he turns, Snape looks away, his eyes flicking away from him, and the grin that came from finishing the job slides off Neville’s face.

 

“What?” Neville asks, smiles uncertainly.

 

“I’ll go get a tarp. The wood will be easier to carry if we have something to levitate it in,” Snape mumbles, as Neville trots over to him in his large and ungainly boots.

 

“I didn’t mean I don’t like your company,” Neville teases. “You don’t have to be jealous of our imaginary neighbours.”

 

Snape sneers at him, says, “Don’t flatter yourself,” and Neville grins again.

 

“I bet their house isn’t as nice as ours. Yours.”

 

“Potter’s, technically.” Snape hasn’t moved to get that tarp, but just stands there. Maybe he has forgotten what he said earlier, maybe he just threw something out to justify leaving. Interesting. 

 

“Oh, right,” Neville says and his tone surprises him. He doesn’t sound like he’s teasing at all, but sounds bitter and almost irritated. Desperately, he searches for something else to say, some cover up.

 

“Oh, what a change in attitude, Longbottom,” Snape smirks, beats him to it. “Is The Golden Boy’s grand sense of self finally bothering you?”

 

Neville laughs, nervously. “No. No, I just. Are you going to get the tarp then, or should I?”

 

Snape stands there and looks at him searchingly until Neville demonstratively shoves past him, and then he gives in. “I’ll be back,” he says, as if he could choose not to.

 

Neville’s heart is pounding and he sits down on the fallen tree while he watches Snape leave, pulls his mittens off, breathes in the cold air. He sits like that when Snape comes back too, and then they set to carrying or levitating the wood into the tarp, before Neville ties it together to make a sort of improvised sack. He tries a Wingardium Leviosa and it hovers easily above the moss and vegetation.

 

When they start the trek back to the house, the sun has already started setting, shines its last light at them, the rays split by the tree tops. It’s beautiful and Neville feels accomplished, at ease, trotting along with his day’s work in the tarp beside him and Snape in front of him. Snape, just a shape now really, backlit. He has his gloves off and his hands look red and cold and that’s just where Snape stops, dead in his tracks, so suddenly that Neville bumps into him, almost drops the bag of wood.

 

“Be quiet,” Snape hisses, reaches a hand behind him to grab at Neville’s coat. Neville looks down at the hand, now on the front of his stupidly large coat, now on _him._

 

He does as he’s told and peers out from beneath Snape at whatever it is that has made him stop without saying a word. He huffs out a surprised breath when he sees what it is – a deer. It looks about as surprised as they are where it stands on the path ahead of them.

 

“Oh,” Neville lets out, and the hand on the front of his coat tightens.

 

The deer is larger than he would have thought, even with no antlers. Large, but not scary. Neville feels to his very core that it’s benevolent.

 

“Don’t frighten it,” Snape says and Neville feels almost offended. As if he’s the frightening one in this company. The deer doesn’t seem scared at all, not threatened at all.

 

“It’s beautiful,” Neville whispers and he truly means it. There is something hushed and churchlike about the moment, about the deer as it stares back at them with big, shiny eyes. Suddenly its ear twitches, and it’s gone, jumps back off the path, back into the wild.

 

Snape doesn’t shift, but seems less tense, relaxes his shoulders. Neville breathes out and then puts a gloved hand on top of Snape’s colder one. Snape twitches, tugs it back towards himself like he wasn’t aware he’d moved it in the first place.

 

“Woah,” Neville exclaims under his breath, still not sure if he’s allowed to move.

 

“There might be more coming, we should move. We shouldn’t disturb them,” Snape murmurs and clears his throat.

 

“That was a doe, right? Without the antlers?”

 

Snape has already taken four giants steps, seems to want to get out of there as fast as possible and Neville hurries behind him, the tarp with the wood in it trailing behind.

 

He doesn’t ask again, just lets Snape lead the way out of the woods. When they reach the house, it’s almost completely dark out and they decide to pile the wood on the porch for now, chop it tomorrow.

 

“I didn’t know there were deer here,” Neville says, as they brush the snow from their boots and pull their outer layer of clothing off.

 

“Hm,” Snape just answers.

 

“Did you know there were deer here?” he prods but Snape is shut off to him. He walks past Neville into the kitchen without saying a word.

 

It’s strange. Neville hasn’t been one for outside exploring and when he finds himself in nature he usually only pays attention to the flora and not the fauna. Seeing that animal had been like meeting something powerful, bigger than himself, elegant. To think that the place that made him could also make something like that is mindboggling. Snape seems effected too, but differently. Not awestruck but scared.

 

“Do you not like animals?” Neville asks as he trails after him into the warmth of the kitchen, to sit by the kitchen counter and watch Snape chop onions.

 

“I like them just fine. Don’t you have anything else to do?” he says patiently, bringing out the chopping board and the knife.

 

Neville smiles. “Well, I thought it was pretty cool, anyway. What are you making, can I help?”

 

He heaves his upper body across the counter, peers at the small note Snape has put down on the wooden countertop. He can’t read the spindly writing of the recipe upside down and gives up, sinks back into his seat.

 

Snape doesn’t let him help and Neville has to wait until dinner is served to find out what it is – a creamy pasta with mushrooms and bacon. They have leftovers the next day which Neville eats after unearthing the plants in the garden that otherwise wouldn’t make it through the winter, placing them carefully in enormous pots that he levitate into his room and the cellar. Snape begrudgingly lets him keep most of them in his work room down there. They won’t need any sun, not with the spells Neville has put on them.

 

It’s a nice thought, to think Snape has some company down there when he works.


	6. you can read me anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from the song the book of love.

They go on like that, in peace. Halloween comes and goes and it’s well into November when the first real snow starts to fall. Real as in will not thaw away and will cling to the windows and the ground with an admirable sort of conviction. Soon they’ll be snowed in. Harry won’t be able to get here and they’re both bracing for it. Even though the jealousy Neville feels for him hasn’t subsided, it has been comforting to know that someone can at least reach them. It’s been something to look forward to for both of them.

Neither of them really go outside during this time. Neville had tried to clear a path to the garden but the snow just keeps falling and it’s hopeless. Not that he complains. They spend their evenings in front of the fire in the living room, the only real warmth in the house. They have heaters in almost every room of course, and Neville has set to renewing the heating charms almost every day but there’s something unbeatable about an open flame, something real and grounding. Neville understands the layers of rugs on the floor now, and dreads going into the cold tile of the bathroom. The house feels like an animal’s burrow, layers upon layers of soft cotton, and the two of them curled up inside it together.

Especially on a night like this when the wind tugs at the walls and the windows and Neville is buried under three pairs of blankets, a book in his lap. Snape seems too stubborn for that, or he just has some natural aversion to feeling cosy. Either way, he sits as he always sits, legs crossed in the sofa.

“What are you reading?” Neville asks him, and then flicks his eyes over to the windows and the snow throwing itself at the house, as if to make it topple over, tear it from the ground.

“You wouldn’t find it interesting,” Snape says, not looking up from the thick, leather-bound book. 

“Come on,” Neville coaxes.

Snape sighs and lowers the book. “A study on the differing effects of Sleeping Draught.”

“Oh,” Neville nods like he’s interested. “And what are the, um, effects?

“Sleep, mostly,” he says, takes a sip of his whiskey. “You?”

“What I’m reading?” Neville hides the book in his lap. “Guess.”

“I’m not going to guess. I’m not a child.” Neville can hear it in his voice though, that he will if Neville wants him to. He smiles at him until he gives in with a sigh. “Alright. Give me a time period.”

“Don’t peek,” Neville mumbles as he flips to the first page of the novel. “Um… 20th century.”

“A novel, I suppose? Fiction?”

“Yes,” Neville nods.

Snape looks over Neville’s shoulder, out into the dark chill. “Is it a love story?”

“Yes. I would say so. Could be seen as a coming of age novel, I guess. This is fun,” he adds. Most often now he likes to talk to Snape, about anything really. The fire in the fireplace crackles.

“I won’t be able to guess.”

“Don’t give up! I can give you a quote, how about that?” Neville offers, is already flipping through the pages to find something good. “Here,” he says and then he reads, “ _He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: his loneliness: it increased_.”

Snape smiles. “Maurice.”

“Yes! You got it,” Neville grins. He holds up the book for Snape to see. “Sorry I picked such a depressing quote.”

“I suppose it would have been hard to write it without being depressing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forster was a muggle,” Snape says carefully. “A homosexual man living in muggle society during the early 20th century, writing an unconventionally honest book about two men in love. Muggles are generally not very welcoming of the unconventional.”

Neville has stopped smiling. “Isn’t that true of wizards too? Every society fears the unknown, doesn’t it? Homophobia isn’t exclusive to muggles, not in my experience.”

Neville feels like he has maybe said too much. Those words Snape spat at him before swirl around in his head. Pathetic. Sad. That crush has faded into something more manageable, but he wonders if Snape can still sense it from him. He hopes not. Snape made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested, and what would that lead to anyway? Snape stays quiet, his fingers playing across the armrest.

It could have been a guess. Snape could have just thrown out something, anything, just to try and push him away. Maybe Neville has jumped to conclusions, maybe he just wanted to make fun of Neville for being soft, for expecting Snape and him to be friends. Friendly. Neville is not ashamed of being soft.

Any way you see it this seems dangerous, talking to Snape about this. He smiles half-heartedly. “Anyway, I’m liking the book so far. I’m really impressed you guessed correctly. Do you know all your books this well?”

“Most of them, I’d say,” he shrugs.

“Bet I can find a quote you don’t know.”

“Bold of you.”

“Do you accept?” Neville slides forward in the couch, reaches his hand out questioningly.

“Alright,” Snape says, grasps his hand. “I bet that I can name the title and author of anything you find in this house.”

They shake on it. Snape’s hand is warm, and fits into his own so well that when Neville releases it he feels like he can still feel the soft squeeze of his fingers.

* * *

 

The game gives them something to do. Mostly Neville, to be honest. He brings Snape quotes from everything he can think of, everything he has read, and Snape gets it right almost immediately. It goes so far that Neville accuses him of using Legilimency to cheat, which Snape denies with a gloating smirk. 

He knows everything. Neville tries excerpts from everything he has read in Snape’s house, every little crappy book he has found lying around and taken a liking to. Dickinson and more Forster, A Room with a View. Everything from poetry to prose to non-fiction, bland and floral language. He tries Jane Eyre several times because he thinks he might trick him, but no. Mary Shelley, Lord Byron. Wordsworth and Sappho. Most often Snape gets it right by just hearing the quote, sometimes Neville gives him hints. Every time he gets it right Neville grins at him, pretends to be upset that he’s lost, until it kind of does annoy him.

“ _How?”_ he asks when Snape has correctly guessed an excerpt from Hans Christian Andersen.

“Andersen has a very distinct writing style,” Snape says, obviously pleased with himself. He makes a face just as Neville says the quotes, as he pretends to think it over, licks his lips with just the tip of his tongue. Honestly, Neville would play this game forever just to be able to get a glimpse of that expression.

But now he’s got him. Now, he has thought of something brilliant.

“ _You’ve never been more beautiful,”_ Neville reads from the small piece of paper he has the thing written down on, so Snape won’t know where he got it from. “ _Your eyes like two full moons, as here in this poor old dancehall among the dreadful tunes, the awful songs we don’t even hear.”_

He looks up expectantly at Snape, who frowns. “It’s too short. I don’t know it.”

“Try and guess, and if you don’t get it right I’ll give you another quote from the same passage,” he says.

“Poetry?” Snape asks, turning his nose up. “It sounds like a limerick. Where did you find it?”

“I’m not telling you where I found it,” Neville laughs.

“It’s not very well written. A children’s book? Are you sure-?” Snape starts and Neville interrupts.

“You know the rules. You know what, I think I’ll let you sit in this one. Sleep on it,” he says and Snape’s irritated look is almost better than the playfully thoughtful one.

Neville starts to get little notes, written in Snape’s spindly, thin writing. In the middle of the day, when Snape is working, a piece of paper will float up to Neville, asking him what country of origin, which century, what gender the author is. Like he’s been struck by something and couldn’t wait for Neville to hear it. Neville answers by shouting, mostly, or just laughing at him. This part of the game is fun, for Neville at least, and he pretends not to notice that it’s good for Snape’s magic as well.

When they’re well into December, Snape still hasn’t gotten it right, but he’s doing more magic than ever since Neville has been here. It seems like he’s enjoying flexing his muscles, almost. When Neville pops his head in to watch him cook, he’s surrounded by knives flashing as they chop things by themselves, ladles stirring delicious smelling soups or chopping boards floating next to him at waist level. It’s beautiful, really, in the way magic is when someone is so in control of it. It’s a natural extension of him, almost physical, and suddenly Snape is his old self again. Tall and powerful and intimidating. When he sees Neville spying and raises an eyebrow at him, Neville expects to be yelled at. He’s there, right there. The man who used to humiliate him every chance he got, the man who made him feed dangerous potions to his pet, who made him feel so ridiculous and tiny.

“What are you doing?” Snape asks, not shouting at him at all. “I know you’re not fond of asparagus but it’s a vital part of the dish.”

He sounds like he’s excusing himself, like he cares about what Neville thinks, like he cares about Neville getting what he wants.

“Are you…?” Snape asks, leaves the sentence open. He looks at Neville only for a second and maybe there is concern there.

“Yeah,” Neville says and smiles. He snaps out of it. “I think I can stomach some asparagus.”

 

* * *

 

 

They try Legilimency again. Snape says he’s ready, spits it out one morning during breakfast. “I think we should try again,” he says, almost giddy. Well, as giddy as Snape gets.

“Are you sure?” Neville asks him and Snape turns serious.

“Yes. Of course, I’m sure. I won’t push myself this time,” Snape assures him, and then when he sees Neville’s cautious expression, “I promise you it will be fine.”

Of course, Neville gives in. “Only for a little bit. And don’t try to peek at where I got that quote from,” he smiles, softly.

So they try. They go about their day and then, after dinner, sit down in the study again, like before. Neville sits in the sofa and Snape sits opposite him in a chair, serious and calm. He has his wand in his hand, has had it with him the whole afternoon. Like he’s charging up.

Neville is more nervous than Snape. He doesn’t doubt that Snape would handle a drawback better this time, but still. He’d sounded hurt, last time, and Neville had hated it. He keeps replaying that wounded groan, over and over in his head.

“If you agree, I’d like to touch you this time,” Snape says and Neville swallows down his protest at the sight of his calm, dark eyes. “Would that be alright? It would help with the connection.”

Neville laughs nervously. “Yeah, um, sure. Yeah.”

Snape scoots forward in his chair, leans toward Neville, looks into his eyes. He’s suddenly acutely aware of his hair being too long and messy, his pores and his chapped lips. He wonders if that’s what Snape thinks about to, but if he does notice these things, he doesn’t say.

With one hand, Snape reaches out and touches the patch of skin where Neville’s jaw meets his neck, slides back to behind his ear. He finds the position he wants, and stops, with four fingers cupping the back of Neville’s neck and his thumb in line with his jaw. Just the smallest of twitches to his hand, otherwise he’s calm and controlled.

“Are you ready?” he asks, his wand drawn and pointed at Neville’s head. Neville just breathes loudly, can’t seem to be able to close his mouth properly. Snape’s thumb presses down gently.

“Mm. Yes,” Neville gets out and then it’s as if he disappears into the dark pools of Snape’s eyes, into that misty, confusing space he was in last time. He doesn’t even hear Snape perform the charm but he must have.

They go slow this time, and it’s not as frantic and disoriented now. He slowly slips into a memory. First there’s just blinding sun and warmth and then he settles in his body. No, not his body, but a sixteen year old version of the body he has now. He’s sixteen and happy, lying in the grass at Hogwarts, listening to Luna’s soft and slow voice talk to him about her mother. A bed time story her mother used to tell him. It makes him feel better. Lying on the grass there, he has a sixteen year old epiphany about how the world works, an epiphany that makes him feel better.  

When he arrives back in the cabin again, back with Snape, he’s smiling.

“Oh,” he breathes, Snape’s hand still holding his skull, his thumb now making little circles on the soft skin below Neville’s ear. “That was nice.”

A stupid comment but Snape seems pleased nonetheless. “Yes.”

Then Neville jumps to attention. “Oh, are you okay? How do you feel?”

Snape lets him go, his hand moves to his own shoulder, rubs where Neville knows the scar is. “Fine. I want to try again.”

“Only if you’re sure,” Neville protests, but Snape has put his hand back on the side of his face and he can’t seem to put up much of a fight anymore.

This time he hears Snape say it, “Legilimency,” and then he’s back there, sinks into that wispy, dark whirl again. He opens his eyes and is in St. Mungo’s. He’s ten and is reading a story to his mother, her eyes glassy and staring out at the rain running down the window. The light coming through the window sends shadows playing across her face, makes it look like water is pouring down her cheeks. When he reads the sad parts, he pretends she’s crying, that she’s so absorbed his storytelling that she’s unbelievably moved. She’s not, of course. She’s not moved by anything. She can’t hear the story.

He gasps as he’s pulled back into the present this time, can’t seem to draw enough breath into his lungs for it to matter. He’s not hyperventilating, not yet.

Snape has also pulled away, is also breathing loudly, harsh drags of air from his nose.

There’s a hard knot in Neville’s stomach, something twisting and turning like a snake. He laughs, a rough chuckle. “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“You did last time too,” Snape says and Neville almost jumps. He’d almost forgotten Snape was there.

“How are you feeling?” he says, puts a hand on Snape’s knee which Snape brushes off.

“Great,” he says but he looks like he’s going to be sick too. He’s so pale he’s almost yellowish, and he’s still breathing loudly from his nose.

“You sure? I’ll get you some water,” Neville says, sceptical. He enjoys the chance to get to collect himself, get away from Snape for just a second. To allow Snape a second to breathe too. When he gets back to the living room, this time around, Snape is still there. He gratefully takes the glass of water from Neville, is cradling his head.

“Do you want something else? Can I get you anything?”

“You can sit down and stop talking so damn much,” he says, more tired than angry. Neville does, sits down next to him. He knows he’s hovering, knows he should back off. Snape doesn’t complain though, just says, “It’ll pass,” and drinks the water.

He can hear him later, when he lies awake staring at the ceiling, can hear him retching in the bathroom. He doesn’t go out to see how Snape is doing, knows he’d hate that. Instead he just lies there until he can’t keep his eyes closed any longer, listens to the noises from the bathroom, somehow comforting.

He waits until ten o’clock the next morning and then knocks on Snape’s door, tentatively. This time, he gets a response, a small, “Wait,” and then after a long pause, “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

He looks like hell, like he didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before. Neville knows he didn’t. The long hair is tangled and his breath smells like something rotten. He doesn’t say much, just sits down at the kitchen table and drinks the coffee Neville has made.

“I’m sorry the coffee is bad. You make better coffee,” he smiles gently.

Snape just tilts his head slightly, coughs.

“You seem better this time,” Neville says but with a glare from Snape he drops the subject, instead talks on and on about the new vegetables he wants to plant when spring comes. He gets better.

The next day he’s working as usual, and it only takes him a week or so to be back to casting spells again. They do the Christmas decorations together, standing side by side and fastening the floating lights in the ceiling. They’re both too lazy to actually get a tree but they decorate the mantle and the bannister of the staircase with wreaths of holly and lights. Neville pushes a bit on the lights, but that’s the best part of the holiday, all the glistening warm lights in the dark. That and the smells. He’s had to push Snape into making a proper Christmas dinner as well and they’ve compromised – Neville is allowed to make a roasted chicken, and before that he’s going to make gingerbread cookies.

But that’s later, now it’s only the first week of December they stand with wands outstretched and work together, Neville sometimes humming a line or two from a Christmas carol until Snape glares at him with enough ferociousness to make him stop.

“Do you think we should decorate the outside of the house?” Neville asks, straightening the candles he has placed on the table in the living room.

“Why? For who’s benefit?” Snape asks, now trying to melt the snow that’s coated half the windows.

“Mm, I guess you’re right, it’s not like we’re going to have visitors. Right?” The thought strikes him that maybe Snape does have someone to celebrate Christmas with. Most people who celebrate Christmas, in Neville’s experience, do it with family or at least friends.

“No one but us,” Snape mumbles, preoccupied with the heat coming out of his wand, the snow sloshing off the window.

“You know you can have someone over, right? I can stay away, in my room, you know, if you wanted to have a friend over or-“

“You are more than enough company, thank you,” Snape interrupts. He doesn’t offer the same to Neville, they both know Neville couldn’t have friends over. Harry keeps more regular contact now, but has stopped visiting in person. Neville understands that the hike would be too much work, but he hates it anyway. He wants to see them, wants to hug someone. He wants to receive a gaudy, knitted shirt in the mail and eat Christmas leftovers with his grandmother and his relatives and then sneak off to see if Ginny has received her gift in the mail yet. He wants to stay up late with Luna every night between Christmas and New Year’s, just because they can. It’s childish, maybe, but he can’t help himself, wishing for things he knows won’t happen.

Snape seems to sense the shift in mood, tucks his wand back in his pocket and sits down to watch Neville work. “Do you want to exchange gifts?” Snape asks, and Neville knocks over a book with his elbow.

“Oh. I didn’t think you’d want to, I don’t have anything planned. I mean, it’s not like we’re, um,” Neville rambles, as he carefully puts the book back where it was.

“It may have been a long time since I properly celebrated Christmas, but I do believe it is customary for friends to give gifts? Am I correct? About this horribly exotic custom I’ve had described to me?”

“Calm down, sir.” Neville has taken to using sir when teasing Snape’s overly ambitious comebacks. He thinks it works at annoying him enough to be given a few seconds of angry silence. “Since when are we friends?”

“As you have so succinctly put it, we do live together,” Snape says, like this is no big deal.

“Isn’t it presumptuous for you to just claim that we’re friends? It takes more than just sharing space, you know. How do you know what I feel?”

“You’re comfortable around me.”

“I’m comfortable?” Neville laughs, such a strange thing to say. A relationship isn’t a mathematical equation, isn’t instructions for a potion or a recipe for soup. He feels like Snape is diagnosing him, like he has put in the correct ingredients and is now waiting for the end result. He knows Snape isn’t that stiff and confused when it comes to social relationships, he knows that. Maybe this is a defence mechanism? Anyway, communication is good and Neville kind of enjoys the challenge of handling Snape.

“You’ve stopped stuttering, drawling your speech like that, almost entirely. You did that when you arrived,” Snape lists patiently, seemingly without emotion. “You voluntarily spend time with me. You know you don’t have to even be in the same room with me if you don’t want to? You’re choosing to do that. You like it when I touch you.”

“What?” Neville squeaks, his face immediately crimson.

“You like it when I touch you,” Snape repeats. “I only have to pat you on the arm for you to relax and do what I say.”

Neville laughs now, loud and aggressive. “Okay. Okay, whatever. So you do that deliberately just because of the effect it has on me? It has no other benefits for you then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Snape says, head lowered.

“You… you know you get to, like, hug me if you want to? Right?”

“If I, against all odds, should feel that urge, it’s such a treat to hear you wouldn’t take offense,” Snape sneers, although half-heartedly.

He doesn’t care that Snape is being nasty. It’s surface nasty, only because he can’t deal with the conversation otherwise. It’s amazing how used to that Neville is, by now it doesn’t even bother him.

“Do you do that often? Like, do you _need_ to touch me for the Legilimency to work better or do you just do it because it calms me down?”

“It’s a combination, probably. It helps that you’re less agitated, surely,” Snape answers like he’d been prepared for that question, had an answer already in his head. “Physical interaction has been known to help during magic connected to the mental processes.”

Neville smiles, doesn’t think that Snape is fully aware of what he’s admitting to. This is what he means, when he says it’s a welcome challenge. The enjoyable disconnection of treating the whole of Snape as an enigma, in speech and action, and then the surprising intimacy when he gets Snape to admit he goes out of his way to make Neville feel at ease. Like a game, but the reward is just knowing that Snape cares about him.

“Alright, I can admit to friendship on my part, fine. You got me. How about you, then?” he slides down into the sofa, finished fiddling with holly and candles and ribbons for now.

“What about me?” Snape asks, sits in the other sofa.

“Do you…” Neville wrinkles his forehead as he thinks of how to phrase it. He’s pushing it now, he knows that. He hardly expects an answer. “Do you consider me your friend? As in, you enjoy my company, you… feel comfortable around me?”

“Sure,” Snape says. “To a degree.”

“Lovely way to put it. You know I could do that thing too? Listing how I affect you?

  
“Oh? Enlighten me?”

“I know for a fact that you have healthier routines, and that it’s because you enjoy spending time with me and because you let me tell you what to do. You eat better when I’m here. Any time we’re arguing and I don’t want to talk to you, you don’t eat breakfast, right? That implies that you do it because you enjoy my company. I don’t think you would otherwise. You smile at me a lot. You don’t do that with Harry,” he monologues, maybe in over his head. He can’t stop now, though. “You let me move the plants into your workroom and I know how much you think of the cellar as being your personal space. You let me help you, a lot. You ask me about what kinds of food I like and-“

“I don’t want to throw out food just because I cooked something you didn’t enjoy,” Snape interjects, maybe insulted, maybe just playing along.

“Your magic is better,” Neville throws out, just barrelling through it now. “I think that’s partly because of me. I think you’re happier and that makes you more confident that you can do it.”

Snape makes a grunting noise. “You make me sound like a child.”

Neville can’t help flashing him the tiniest of grins then. “Do you agree then? Don’t make it out to be just you lowering yourself to be friends with me, like it’s one-sided. You get something out of this too.”

“To repeat myself: I never said it was one-sided,” Snape says, his hair falling in his eyes as he gently shakes his head.

“Don’t do that, you implied it.”

“I do enjoy spending time with you. You do make me feel at ease,” Snape starts, talking haltingly. “I consider you a friend.”

“Oh,” Neville says, because now Snape has done something new. He didn’t think he’d do this. At that little losing noise, Snape smirks at him, gets up and leaves. Goddamn it, Snape won.

 

* * *

 

 

They have those Legilimency sessions two times a week throughout December, and every time, Snape reaches out and places his hand on the back of Neville’s neck, or on his jaw, or flat against his collar bone – every time tilting his head, like he is challenging Neville to say something. Neville doesn’t, just sits there and lets Snape touch him, hands always warm and smooth against his skin.

There have been no news from Harry and the others, about Neville’s assailant. Harry says they’re all working hard, and Neville has no choice but to trust him on that. He wishes there was more he could do than these tiny trips into his memory, but maybe they are slowly but surely getting somewhere. They haven’t found anything useful so far, but each session is longer than the last, and one evening they even manage to get to the night of the attack itself, or the aftermath at least. Neville lying on the floor of some banquet hall, his dress robes wet with something, his vision blurry. They don’t find anything out, but it’s close. It’s so close to knowing.

As Christmas approaches, Neville finds himself more and more agitated. Most of the time now he can pretend that he’s not forced to be here, that the only reason he’s here isn’t that violent circumstances have made it so. But sometimes, like now, it creeps up on him, seeps into his head like sewage, the fact that whatever peace he finds here with Snape is just pretend. Neither of them have chosen to be here together, and Neville isn’t a wanted guest, not originally. It doesn’t matter what Snape says, if he claims they’re friends now or that they work well together, he just can’t erase the why of Neville’s arrival here. He’s been here for more than six months now, half a year. He wonders if Snape thinks about that too. How long it has been. When Neville arrived, summer was in full bloom and now they are buried in snow, white everywhere.

The cold has plateaued, the snow as well. In the day, when Neville occupies his day with cleaning the house, organizing Snape’s things, the windows outside from some angles show nothing but white, untouched snow, stretching out almost unendingly. It sparkles, in the sunlight, cold and perfect. He takes a cup of afternoon coffee on the porch some days, letting the warmth from the coffee spread from his hands and his stomach through his body, wiping away the cold trying to break through. The quiet then is almost deafening, the snow muffling every noise and sound until there is nothing but Neville’s own heartbeat and the huffing of his breathing. Being a living thing has never been so unique as then.

In the night, the village down the slope from the house lights up. Just small dots just below the horizon, like a cluster of stars. It feels like it’s a spectacle, just for them. Who else could it be for? Who else could see it from this angle, create such a perfect view. It’s almost a waste on the two of them.

Snape works all Christmas, but shortens his hours, only stays in the cellar from nine to three. Neville wonders sometimes, what he does down there all day. He sometimes lets Neville wash containers or cauldrons, or chop things, and every time Neville is there he is busy, always stirring or bottling. Does he do that when Neville isn’t around as well, or does he alter his behaviour when he knows he’s being watched?

The work room is littered with his pots and the hibernating plants. Sometimes when Neville looks at him like that, surrounded by this green, living his life as if Neville being there is not only tolerated but welcome, he feels something tugging in his chest. He stares at him too often, he knows that, but either Snape doesn’t notice or he lets him do it. What does that mean? He wonders, late at night, or alone during the day, spends hours with his hands on himself, wondering.

He works Christmas day as well, and Neville spends the day preparing the food for the dinner. It’s cosy, the warmth from the stove and the homely smells. He tells this to Snape as they eat, and gets a noncommittal grunt about being sentimental, but smiles. He likes Christmas. He wishes he got to spend it with more people, but this isn’t too bad, to be honest. Snape seems in a better mood than usual and Neville tells him this too when they’re clearing the dishes.

Snape grunts again, and then says, “Gifts?” in an effort to change the subject.

“Right! Um, living room?” Neville asks nervously and they move to the living room with, to Neville at least, obligatory hot cocoa.

Snape gives him his present without comment, goes off to stand by the fireplace with his cup of cocoa. The surprisingly large package is neatly wrapped, the edges crisp. The wrapping paper is decorated with garish smiling teddy bears wearing santa hats, and Neville laughs much to Snape’s embarrassment.

“You had wrapping paper all along? Mine’s certainly not wrapped this, um, colourfully,” Neville smiles and Snape glares at him.

“Unsurprisingly, modest wrapping paper is hard to come by,” he just says and then drinks his hot cocoa.

Neville unwraps it carefully, folding away the paper piece by piece. It’s a set of gardening tools, all in beautiful wood. The handles are a shiny metal, painted green.

“Oh,” Neville almost gasps, and then clears his throat. “Oh, these are lovely.”

“You don’t have proper tools. I thought I’d-“

“They’re beautiful, thank you so much,” Neville says and then he makes the mistake of hugging him. He knows it’s a mistake as soon as he’s taken his first step towards him. It’s awkward and quiet and Snape seems taken by surprise. He doesn’t return it until Neville starts to pull away, and then it’s a small pat on the back. Very boyish, very stiff.

He smells the same as always, like old books and flowery soap and something else that Neville can’t describe. Their cheeks had brushed.

After he’s pulled away, Snape turns away, clears his throat.

“Right! Right, your gift!” Neville almost shrieks and pulls it out from behind the sofa.

It’s not wrapped at all, really, just placed in a paper bag that he found in the kitchen. He has at least tied string around it, and Snape pulls at it carefully. He sits in the sofa looking as if he could get up and leave at any moment, at the edge of the seat, the gift balanced on his knees.

He finally gets it open and Neville is already pre-emptively blushing, ready for him to not like it or to think it’s too little or too much. He holds the gift, the mittens Neville has knitted for him, gently in two open hands.

“They’re, um, mittens. I noticed you didn’t have any so I, um, asked Harry to send some supplies,” Neville says, rambling. “Do you like them?”

He was going to give them to him anyway, even if Snape hadn’t settled that they were giving gifts, so he’s worried that Snape won’t think it’s enough. If he hadn’t already been working on them, he would have been in a real jam since Harry has stopped visiting for the winter.

Snape pulls them on, and they at least fit. They’re green, with a complicated pattern in the middle, a square looking snake with its tongue out, wrapped around a staff. More a green squiggly line around a stiff brown one, but maybe it’s good enough.

“Thank you,” Snape says, looks up at him with sincere, dark eyes that are almost frightening somehow. “Asclepius?”

“Yeah,” Neville mumbles.

“The god of healing. Thank you.”

“You’re… You’re welcome.” Nervously, he too sits at the edge of his seat, his hands wrapped tightly around his mug. “Cheers, I guess,” he says and raises his mug in a toast. They clink them together and then Snape leans back in his seat.

“Any more traditions we should honour?” he asks, taking off the mittens and letting them go from hand to hand, touching the pattern with two fingers.

“We have to get up late tomorrow and eat leftovers for brunch,” Neville smiles. “But no, I don’t think there’s anything right now.”

“So you wouldn’t think it boring if I read?” Snape asks, and Neville shakes his head no.

“I have a mirror appointment with Ginny and Harry,” he says and gets up. “I’ll be back down later, yeah?”

Snape nods, he has already picked up his book. He carries his present up, holds the tools almost reverently and puts them down on the bed next to him. As he talks to them, he can’t stop glancing over to them, running his hands over them. They really are beautiful, and they must have been expensive.

Harry and Ginny are almost painfully cheery. They deserve it though. They show him around the Burrow, and he waves and smiles to everyone. Mrs Weasley says she has his sweater waiting for him and he laughs, thanks her, says he’s looking forward to it. Ginny says she’s gotten a letter from Luna, that she’s celebrating Christmas at home with her father before traveling. Then they leave the kitchen and sit in Ginny’s room, talk for half an hour about what everyone got for Christmas, how they’re visiting the cemetery tomorrow. Hermione and Ron are joining then, and there’s going to be Christmas lunch.

“I hope your holiday isn’t terrible,” Ginny says, her face concerned.

“It’s actually nice?” Neville tells her and tries to stop his lips from quirking upwards.

“Oh? Did Snape get you something nice for Christmas?” she laughs, obviously joking. Neville considers not telling her about the gift, but why not? She’ll be happy that he’s not miserable.

“He did, actually,” Neville says and Ginny goes quiet. He holds up the box of tools so she can see, picks up the spade carefully to show it off.

“Oh, wow. Are you serious?” Ginny asks, squinting her eyes so she can see properly. “He gave you that? Are we talking about the same Snape here?”

Harry chimes in then from the right of her with a, “Hey, he’s not so bad anymore.”

“It’s a very beautiful present,” Neville smiles gently. He hasn’t told them much about what they do together, how they’ve settled things. Mostly out of respect for Snape. It’s been implied that he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s actually not a complete dick. And then partly for himself. It feels wrong, that he would burst the bubble they have here, if he told Ginny that he’s actually enjoying Snape’s company. He changes the subject and they talk about what he made for dinner, how he cooked the chicken.

She says she misses him and he’s at a loss for words as to how to describe the distance he’s so aware of. Not just physical separation, but something else too. He feels closer to Snape than he does to them, to a growing degree.

They say goodbye, and Neville sits there in the silence, stares out the window. Above the treetops, the sky is clear and the stars are bright.

* * *

 

 

They spend the days between Christmas and New Years in some sort of holiday daze, eating leftovers and sleeping, lying around reading and being bored together. When New Year’s Eve comes along, they clear the snow of the porch and sit crowded together on the bench outside, waiting for the clock to strike midnight. Snape takes it on himself to set down heating charms and it’s quite comfortable for a few hours. Neville is wrapped in two blankets and he notices with glee that Snape is wearing his new mittens.

About thirty minutes before midnight, the first fireworks light up the sky, coming from the village down the slope. Neville had expected to be nervous about the light noises and sounds, but this far away it’s fine. It’s more than fine, it’s beautiful. Red and green explodes across the clear night sky, fizzle and crackle.

“ _We know that God is everywhere,_ ” Snape mumbles out of nowhere,” _but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”_

“I know that one,” Neville answers him without looking. “That’s Jane Eyre.”

“You get to spout quotes at me so frequently. I have to return the favour,” Snape says, like it’s obvious that he memorized a whole passage. To tell it to Neville. He can feel the warmth of Snape’s body, even through the many layers of clothing between them.

“Very pious.”

“I can’t say I’m very pious, but the view certainly is beautiful,” Snape says.

“Did you figure out that quote yet?” Neville teases and to his surprise, Snape nods.

“It’s a song. On that thing of yours,” he says, calmly and quietly. “Not quite according to the rules, I don’t think it should count.”

“You said anything in the house, not limited to your books.” Neville is smiling ear to ear. This doesn’t feel like losing.

“It’s about dancing. Is that a favourite pastime?” Snape asks, sounding only half interested. Another firework explodes above them, sending sparks all across the sky.

“It’s about love,” Neville answers, suddenly sleepy. He’d like to lean his head on Snape’s shoulder, but doesn’t. “But yeah. I like dancing. Did you steal my music player? Is that where that went?”

Snape knows he likes dancing. He has seen the memory of him at the Yule Ball, felt that elated feeling along with him.

“I’ll give it back to you.”

“You want to listen to it now?” Neville asks, and Snape twitches beside him. It takes him a while to respond.

“As long as we don’t have to dance,” Snape says. “My dancing skills are poor.”

“You don’t have to dance.”

Snape goes up to get the player, and then they sit side by side sharing the headphones. The song is slow and sweet and simple, just vocals and an almost sad ukulele. Neville hums along softly. No, not losing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope it's snowing wherever you are when you're reading this so that you get the whole cozy experience. this chapter really is the ultimate turning point to whatever it is they're developing and i loved writing it! hope you like reading it. 
> 
> i hope you don't find all the music stuff and the novels too goofy and farfetched. i think that maybe you can allow for some goofiness if you've been cooped up in a house all alone for that long.


	7. home to me, home tonight

“You have another house?” Neville asks, feels sheepish. He’s looking away from doing the dishes, his hands moving slowly. He’s nervous. Maybe it’s because Snape has told him he has to leave for the day. It’s the first time Neville will be all alone in the house. 

“It’s mine. It’s empty,” Snape says, in that stilted way he has when he doesn’t want to talk about something. When Neville looks at him questioningly, he reluctantly goes on. “It was my parents’ house.”

“Why don’t you live there, then?” Neville asks, hoping his tone isn’t too nosy. 

Snape licks his lips, opens his mouth and then closes it before starting talking. “When I was worse, when I feared my magic would spike, this house was a better option. The other house, my parents’ house, is in a muggle neighbourhood.”

“Oh. Right. Your father was a muggle, right?” Neville asks and then drops the fork he’s washing in the soapy dishwater. “Sorry,” he squeaks. “Sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Have I given the impression that I had an unfortunate childhood?” Snape questions, raises his eyebrows. Aloof. 

“No. No, you haven’t given an impression at all. I thought that maybe that was on purpose,” Neville says, fishing in the dishwater for a grip on the fork. 

“I have some business in the city I need to attend to as well,” Snape continues, like they haven’t changed the subject at all. “Do you need anything?”

Neville wants to ask him again about the house, about where it is, about what it’s like. Did he play with the neighbour kids when he was little, did he go to school there, before Hogwarts? Neville wants to know everything, but doesn’t ask. 

“I think I’m fine,” Neville smiles. “Are you Apparating?”

“Yes.”

Some part of Neville’s insides twist. What if he splinches himself? Out in the middle of nowhere, or somehow worse, in some alley somewhere, people rushing past him without helping? 

“Are you going to be home for dinner?” he asks instead of asking Snape to reassure him. 

“I’ll try,” Snape says, already on his way out of the kitchen. He leaves half an hour later, bundled up in his coat and scarf. Neville stands in the kitchen and watches him trudge down the hill in the snow, down toward the trees. 

And then he’s alone. It’s baffling, what a difference it makes, not knowing that Snape is only a shout away. He walks through the rooms without knowing what to do with himself. At around ten, when Snape has been gone an hour and the sun is starting to peek out from the cloudy sky, he starts idly tidying things up, sorting things that don’t need sorting. He reorganizes the kitchen drawers, throws out old burnt down candles and replaces them, finds old, dirty coffee cups in places there shouldn’t ever be coffee cups. He clears the staircase from books, tries to remember where they were before they ended up in the stairs, ends up just piling them onto an already very full shelf. 

The clock strikes eleven. He goes upstairs to take a long bath, leaves the door open, just because he can. He lies there for an hour, stares up at the ceiling. 

It’s strange, he doesn’t start thinking about Snape until he’s late, until Neville has already made dinner and put away the leftovers and done the dishes. Before that, in the bath and during the whole afternoon, it’s as if Snape doesn’t exist. He doesn’t wonder where he is, he doesn’t wonder what he’s doing. Not consciously, at least. Maybe there is an underlying worry, but it’s easy to just pretend he’s always been there alone, has always had the whole place to himself.

Any way he sees it, as the clock in the kitchen creeps closer to midnight, his worry increases. It’s dark outside now, has been for hours. Now, he imagines Snape trudging through the snow, falling, not being able to get up. What will he do if Snape doesn’t return? He can’t call anyone, can he? The mirror, on Harry’s end, is stuffed in a closet somewhere, he’s sure of it. Maybe he could just scream into it and hope someone hears him? Or walk down to the edge of the wards and Disapparate, but that would blow their cover. They would have to move. 

On an impulse, he gets up and opens the door, peers out into the darkness, tries to see past the glow the house casts on the snow. Nothing. He gets back in and makes himself a cup of tea, stares ahead of him and tries not to imagine something horrible. What if the person who attacked Neville has gotten hold of Snape somehow? What if they’ve taken him away, hurt him? Killed him? The kettle splutters and Neville wakes up, shakes his head and breathes. 

Oh, no. His lungs feel sewn shut, like someone took them out and closed them up and put them in. He sits down on the couch and leans forward between his knees and slowly, his breathing eases. He lies down and focuses on that, on the slow rise and fall of his chest, his pudgy stomach. He stares up at the ceiling and swallows, once, twice. 

He wakes up to the door slamming shut and someone stomping around in the hallway, stumbling over Neville’s own boots. 

He scoots up higher in the sofa, laughs under his breath. Oh God. His full cup of tea is standing abandoned on the coffee table, cold and bitter. 

“You’re home,” Neville says and gets no response. Snape is pulling his jacket off, leans against the wall to kick his boots off.

“You’re up,” Snape answers finally, his voice slow. Neville isn’t proud of it, but he gets up and follows Snape from the hall to the kitchen. 

Neville glances at the clock on the wall. It’s two in the morning, but he doesn’t say that he’s only up because Snape was late and he was up worrying, that in fact, he’d fallen asleep, that in fact he’s not unhealthily attached to knowing Snape is in the same building. “There’s leftovers in the fridge,” he says instead, leans against the counter as Snape opens the fridge, rummages around in it loudly. 

“Do you want me to heat it up for you?” he asks, but Snape has seemingly abandoned his search for food. 

“There are boxes on the porch. I need to bring those in,” he says, tired and slurred almost. 

“Woah,” Neville says, Snape’s state dawning on him. “Are you… You’re drunk.”

Snape makes a noise, like a laugh but more dismissive. “Not drunk. Tipsy.”

“How did you even get all the way up here like this?” Neville asks, tries to get Snape to look him in the eye. Snape just leans forward, his hair falling in his face, two steadying hands on the kitchen counter.

“I’m not that drunk,” Snape argues. Instead of food now, he has opened the cabinets, swings them open two at a time. 

“I moved the glasses,” Neville says, pushes his hands out of the way. “See, if they’re here, they’re closer to the sink, more easy access to water,” he says and starts to fill the glass up with water. “There you go.”

Snape takes the glass of water, and this close, Neville can smell the alcohol on him. He really does not seem that drunk, Neville reflects. Just little things, the slightly sloppy way he moves his hands, his mouth. 

“Thank you,” Snape smiles. And that. Oh God, Snape smiles, honest and not at all a smirk. Neville has never properly seen that, not this close. He backs away until his back hits the counter, and then he pretends he meant to do it, smiles and leans, tries to be casual. 

“Did it go well?” Neville asks, watches as Snape drains the glass, puts it down with a clink in the sink. 

“Marvellous,” Snape sighs. “I signed papers. Very exciting. I went to the house. Very…”

“Exciting?”

“Yes, a flurry of excitement. I went for a drink.”

“Yeah,” Neville nods, thinks that maybe he should make some coffee. Or maybe Snape just needs to sleep it off. He’s sweet like this though, loose and sloppy. Not as controlled and shut off as he usually is. Maybe this has been the answer for getting along with Snape all along? Some liquor? 

“How was your day?” Snape asks, as if he’s doing a parody of someone else, someone who would ask these questions. He seems to be forgetting that he asks Neville this all the time, that he asked it yesterday. 

“My day was fine. Do you want to go lie down maybe?” Neville asks. He’s the stiff one now, the one who can’t handle the conversation. It’s making him uncomfortable, how much he likes this dynamic. 

Snape shakes his head. “I want to know what you did.”

“I… didn’t do much. Cleared the books off the stairs, I guess,” Neville says, and now Snape takes a step forward. Everything goes unbalanced for a second, as Snape’s clean cotton sheet smell, mixed with the alcohol, fills up his lungs. “I… I, um, read for a bit. Cooked dinner. Did the dishes.”

Snape smiles at his stuttering, a slow and soft smile, and then leans in, puts his head on Neville’s shoulder. He doesn’t have to lean far, they’re almost the same height now, and so the movement is small for such an enormous shift in tension. Neville can feel his warm breath on his collar, his hair against his ear. Oh. 

He stiffens but Snape doesn’t seem to notice. He talks, in a drawling, amused tone. “You cleaned and cooked? I have acquired a housewife.”

Neville has brought his hands up now, hovering awkwardly over Snape’s elbow and his upper arm, respectively. Maybe touching will escalate this.

Has he dreamt of this? He has dreamt of Snape touching him, of the feel of Snape’s hair against his skin, of the feel of really any warm body against his own. This must be something different though. Snape can’t actually mean this. 

“A housewife?” Neville says because he can’t imagine what else to say. 

“Mmhmm,” Snape hums and the vibrations sound throughout Neville’s entire body, which responds with a shiver. Starting at his neck and then moving down his spine, the shiver spreads, warmth following. He’s blushing. 

Neville finally gets the courage to touch Snape, gently puts a hand on his elbow, and Snape reacts like he had grabbed him. He presses closer, brings his own hands to Neville’s hips. Oh yes, oh no. 

“I wanted to see you, tonight,” Snape breathes, his voice now serious. 

“Hm?” Neville gets out, trying desperately to shift so that Snape can’t feel how his dick suddenly has taken interest in the conversation. 

“I Apparated and then climbed all the way up here,” Snape says, lifting his head slightly, not enough to look at Neville though, “because I wanted to…”

Wanted to what? Neville wants to scream at him. Just say it. Just say it so they can both admit it, just say it, just say it. 

“You’re so soft,” Snape says instead, squeezes down on Neville’s hip, slides his hand to the back, slots his fingers into the low of Neville’s back. His fingers press down on Neville’s spine, gently. 

Neville says nothing. He knows he should push him away, he’s so very drunk. They’re going to regret this in the morning, both of them. Snape the most. 

“So soft,” Snape repeats, his mouth now on Neville’s jaw. Like a repetition of their Legilimency sessions, Snape presses down with his lips where his thumb has pressed down so many times. “So warm.”

He shifts his body so that Neville can feel him, all of him. He’s hard. The realisation sends spikes of excitement down his body, down to his hands now grabbing at Snape’s robes, to the back of his head. It tingles, like electricity. 

“I wanted to touch you,” Snape murmurs. “I think about touching you.”

“Oh, wow,” Neville groans, not really aware he’s saying anything. His voice sounds too small, too croaky, to be in this situation. 

“You are so maddeningly…” Snape starts but doesn’t finish his sentence. He kisses him instead, his mouth soft and wet. He breaks off and buries his head in the crook of Neville’s neck. “Let me take you to bed.”

Neville splutters out a small, nervous laugh. More like a scared animal than a person. 

Snape’s hands move again, slide across his back, break loose to come back and cup his face. Snape presses against him again now, slides a leg in between Neville’s. It’s so good Neville thinks he might be dreaming. 

“You’re lovely,” Snape groans, clashes their mouths together again. It’s not as controlled as Neville would have thought it would be, not at all how Neville has imagined it. He can understand why though, can taste the alcohol. It cheapens it a little, but he still can’t be entirely dissatisfied. 

“Thank you,” Neville gets out nervously as Snape rears back again.

Neville can feel Snape smile against his face, can feel the subtle upturn of the corners of his mouth and his stubble and his breath.

He can’t do this though. He can’t. Letting Snape say these things when he knows he’ll want to take it back in the morning is heart breaking. He can’t deal with that. 

“I think we should go upstairs,” Neville says, tries to push at Snape’s chest. “I think you should go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” he murmurs, and Neville doesn’t want him to either. 

“Come on,” Neville smiles. “If you still want to do this in the morning, there’s no harm in waiting, right?”

“Let’s go to bed then,” Snape says and Neville knows they mean different things, but lets Snape grab his shirt with those slim, strong fingers and pull him up the stairs anyway. He follows Snape into his bedroom anyway, even though he knows he should leave, even though he knows this is a bad idea.

“Okay,” Neville tries, his head turned away to stop Snape from trying to kiss him again. “There’s your bed.”

“It’s cold,” Snape goes, sits down on the bed. “It would be warm with you in it.”

Neville laughs at that because it’s such a line. Has Snape used that before on someone else? Did it work, or did they laugh too?

“Please,” Snape says, not a line. Not a line at all. It sounds like he’s never said that to anyone, never so desperately honest. Neville hesitates and when Snape pulls him down on the bed he doesn’t have it in him to get up again. 

“Just to sleep, right?” he asks, as Snape seems intent on anything else than sleeping. He slides the tips of his fingers under Neville’s shirt and everything inside Neville feels like it has gone liquid. “Hey,” he tries and Snape brings his mouth down to the slice of exposed skin and Neville’s head empties. 

His hands move upward and bring the shirt with them, exposing his stomach and his chest to the cold air of the bedroom. Neville swallows, his saliva feels too thick. 

“Hey,” he begins again, and Snape looks up, finally. Neville doesn’t know what else to say, so he pushes at Snape’s shoulders. “Let’s get under the covers,” he mumbles, doesn’t even know if Snape hears him. He shows him what he means, pulls at the covers and then at Snape. 

“Can I take this off?” Neville gestures to Snape’s clothes, his tightly buttoned shirt and the slacks. 

“You can do whatever you want,” Snape tells him, and Neville’s fingers shake as he reaches for the buttons on his shirt, gets one open. Not because this situation is threatening, or because he’s scared, but because he wants to get Snape naked so bad that it hurts, and now isn’t the time for it. Snape kisses him again, as he works, on his collarbone and then the crook of his neck. Sloppy, wet kisses, his tongue making Neville’s knees weak. 

“There you go,” he says, tries to be cheery, as he gets all the buttons open and can slide the shirt off Snape’s frame. “Help me with the pants.”

Snape does, his hands much steadier than Neville’s. The tenting in his pants are now a tenting in his underwear only and Neville makes an almost audible gulp. 

“Under the covers,” he says, as he pulls off his own shirt, kicks his pants off. Snape does as he’s told, and then lies there, watching Neville. Neville takes a second. “Okay. Okay, um, this is the hottest thing that has happened to me my entire life probably, but I don’t think we should do this tonight. I can lie here until you fall asleep, okay? Nothing more than that.”

Snape rolls over on his back, lets out a chuckle. “Okay.”

“I’m serious with you right now,” Neville says. “I don’t think we should, do you understand that?”

Snape’s chuckle dies down and he moves to give Neville space to lie down. “Why?”

“Why? I don’t have to explain that decision to you. Do you understand that we’re not going to, um, do anything tonight?” Neville says as he gets in next to Snape, fluffs his pillow and lies back. 

“I understand,” Snape says obediently, puts his hand on Neville’s stomach. “Is this alright?”

“Yeah,” Neville sighs. Snape’s hand is warm, and heavy and moving slowly downwards. Neville grabs it gently, stops him. “I don’t want to, okay?”

He wants to, so badly. He wants Snape to do whatever he wants with him, but does he know what he wants right now? Doubtful. Neville knows what’s right and what’s wrong in this situation and he’s not going to let Snape ruin that. 

Snape groans, his whole body vibrating it feels like. He’s so warm. Like this, he’s almost intimidating in how real he looks, how much he looks like an actual man. Where Neville is soft and round, Snape is thin and hairy and hard. 

“Go to sleep, okay? We can talk about it in the morning,” Neville mumbles, and Snape pulls him closer, leans on his shoulder. 

He can feel him drift off to sleep, his breathing becoming heavy and slow and his body relaxed. It takes longer for Neville to drift off to sleep and he wakes up before Snape, equally drowsy and antsy. 

When the sun rises and Snape slowly starts to wake up, Neville gets the absolute honour and thrill of seeing Snape realise how it came to be that Neville is in his bed this morning. One second he is peaceful and calm and then he opens his eyes and there’s a second where he just looks happy. A second before he realises where he is, who he’s with and why. Neville smiles at him. 

“Well. Good morning. How are you feeling?” he asks, and Snape groans, buries his head in his hands. They hadn’t bothered with the curtains last night and in the stark sunlight, Snape looks empty of colour, wrecked. His hair is plastered to his forehead, tousled. “Really, how are you?”

Neville reaches out a hand, places it gently on Snape’s knee, through the covers. He recoils, like Neville has burned him. 

“Don’t,” he says and Neville hesitantly brings the hand back to his lap. 

“Hey, I’m not… Are you mad at me?” Neville wonders, worried. 

Snape doesn’t make a sound, just lies there, rubbing his face. 

“I’m sorry if I was… If I did something last night to-“

“If you did something last night?” Snape hoarsely snaps. “Merlin, you are a child.”

“Okay, don’t do that,” he nervously laughs. More angry than nervous, really. He should have known Snape wouldn’t be easy, Snape is never easy. 

Snape removes his hands from his face, sits up. He won’t look at him. Okay. Bravery. That Gryffindor bravery that he supposedly has. That needs to materialise somewhere inside him right about now. 

“Last night was extremely inappropriate,” Snape says, every word a stab in Neville’s stomach. 

“Oh,” Neville says, studies the hands in his lap.

“I never should have asked that of you,” Snape says again. “I shouldn’t have- shouldn’t have-“

It’s a bit of an honour that Snape finds it so hard to say, but also terrifying. ‘Shouldn’t have’. Neville gets to think that, not Snape. The hands in Neville’s lap turn to fists. 

“Don’t say that. You know how I feel. I told you that we could talk about it in the morning and now it’s morning. Are you saying you don’t want to, at all?” 

Snape sneers. “Oh? How do you feel?”

Neville keeps his eyes on his hands and blurts it out. “I really want to sleep with you. You didn’t answer the question, do you?”

“You didn’t want to last night,” Snape grumbles from somewhere to the right of Neville and when Neville snaps his head up, he’s still making that face. Like he doesn’t want to be there, like Neville is an inconvenience.

“Because you were drunk,” Neville almost shouts. “You big fucking idiot. What do you want me to say?”

When Snape doesn’t answer him, Neville does all he can think of to save the situation, leans forward onto his knees and kisses Snape, hard. With one hand on the back of Snape’s head, he holds him still, and with the other he pushes himself up level to Snape’s face. When they break away, Snape looks soft and helpless and Neville’s chest hurts. 

“You’re so dumb,” he whispers, and he knows Snape can feel his breath on his lips because he flicks his tongue out to lick his lips. “Can I touch you?” 

Snape says nothing and so Neville touches him anyway, puts one hesitant hand down on his chest, his ribs.

“I need you to say it’s okay,” Neville says again, his hand not moving. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, but just say something.”

Snape opens his mouth, breathes and Neville uses the silence to realign himself with Snape’s body, sits down on his knees between Snape’s legs. He doesn’t have the covers on him now, and Neville can see all of him. Thin and pale, not as hairy as he would have thought. The scar on his neck and shoulder still stands out. The skin there looks red and stretched tight and Neville wants to touch it. He wants to touch all of him, run his hands over every patch of exposed skin. 

“Are you…? Do you want to?” Neville asks again, the second sentence firm and demanding. He needs to hear him say it, he can’t have waited all night in vain, to not get a clear confirmation or denial of whether Snape wants him or not. 

“Yes,” Snape says, quiet and Neville can’t help but smile. His whole face feels like it’s going to break. He brings a hand up to cover his mouth, and he knows that he’s a second away from blushing.

“Sorry,” he says, can’t stop smiling anyway. “Sorry, I know I look dumb.”

Snape shakes his head, pulls Neville’s hand away from his face and replaces it with his mouth. His soft, wet mouth, and thin, chapped lips. Snape’s hands on him, firm and calloused and cold, running up the sides of his legs, his fingers pressing in when he finds a hold on Neville’s hips. 

“Come here,” he says, his voice sluggish and then he manoeuvres him so that Neville is essentially sitting in his lap, straddling him. It’s slow and comfortable and easy. Surprisingly easy, now. 

The boundaries between different sorts of activities in bed have always been tricky for Neville, but he can say that this feels definitely like making out. Like he imagines foreplay is like, maybe. There are more slow kisses than breaks for breathing, but no direct contact. Snape can’t seem to stop running his hands over his body, his legs and his back, carefully avoiding his ass. Neville wants him to, wants him to touch him everywhere, but can’t seem to ask for it. 

Any time before has always been hurried, never this serious. Never this much at stake. Going to bars and picking someone up isn’t his thing, but the few times he has done it, it has been too little or too fast, or they haven’t been just what he wants. He has never lived with someone for almost a year and then tried to sleep with them. 

Suddenly he’s self-conscious, of his stomach rolls and his hair and oh god, what if Snape thinks he’s too small? Or too inexperienced, laughably and noticeably inexperienced. Can he tell? Can he tell that this is so incredibly important to Neville?

He pulls away, and finds an extremely intense eye contact with Snape. Dark, dark brown eyes, serious and intense. 

“I…” he starts to say, is interrupted by Snape ducking his head down, places a kiss in the middle of Neville’s chest. He licks, a broad, raspy lick up towards his throat. “Oh,” Neville gasps, embarrassingly. 

“What?” Snape asks, finally not just being a silent, serious piece of stone. 

“I don’t know,” Neville gets out, as Snape presses them closer together. “I, um, I haven’t been with a lot of guys. Just so you don’t get surprised if I’m not, um, good.”

Snape shivers, visibly, and when Neville looks down at him he has his eyes closed, tightly squeezed shut.

“Sorry,” Neville mumbles, definitely blushing now. 

“Don’t apologize,” Snape says. “It’s… You don’t have to apologize.”

“Okay,” Neville answers, hesitantly. 

After a small silence, Snape asks, “You’re not a virgin?”

Like he’s expecting a no, wishing for a no. “No, I’m not a virgin,” Neville says, tries to smile at the seriousness of the question. Neville sighs, relieved. Snape has pulled away now, is leaning against the headboard behind him, his hands relaxed and fitting so perfectly against Neville’s back. 

“What do you like?”

“Uh,” Neville hums, ever so eloquently. “I don’t know. I… I like it when you touch me? You have a very nice mouth.”

He sounds like he is in kindergarten. He sounds like he is nineteen and has only ever done hand stuff with two guys and neither time went very well and now he’s incredibly nervous and embarrassed. 

“Oh?” Snape smirks, like he didn’t know. Like he didn’t know that all Neville wants is for him to show him what to do, to put his mouth on him and let Neville groan and writhe and come, all over both of them. 

Snape reaches for his wand on the nightstand, performs a silent Accio and then there’s a little container of something in his hand. He lets it balance on his chest, ominously, between them. 

“Move down a little,” he says and Neville scrambles to do as he’s told, while Snape guides him with his hands. “Like that, good.”

Neville is too afraid to look stupid to ask what’s in the bottle, but Snape shows him, pours some out in his hand. Lube, oily and sticky. With the other hand, he eases Neville’s underwear down an inch and then looks up at him, questioningly. Neville shimmies them down and out of the way, now naked and incredibly embarrassed. He’s hard, so hard that he’s dripping, that his thighs feel strained and tight. 

Snape takes his hand, the one with the lube in it, and slowly wraps his fingers around him. So intent and concentrated. 

“Oh,” Neville gasps, “Oh, Merlin.”

Snape snaps his face up at that, stares at him. Neville feels like he’s going to explode. Then he reaches the other hand down again, to his own underwear, to his own erection. He pulls it out, strokes Neville one more time and then moves his sticky hand to himself, strokes once.

“Oh, Merlin,” Neville repeats, deeper this time, more of a groan. “This is going to be embarrassing, I’m going to come, I’m going to-“

Snape brings them together, strokes them in one hand, sloppy and loose and Neville’s breath is sucked out of him at the look of it, the feel of it. He whines, loud and needy.

“Wait,” Snape breathes heavily. “Not yet.”

“If you keep doing that I will.”

And then Snape removes his hand with a smirk, leans back against the headboard again, relaxed. His dick bounces back to lie against his stomach, thick and red. 

“No, don’t stop,” Neville whines, presses his hips down against him, kisses him. His hands don’t know where to go. 

“Mmhm,” Snape hums against his lips. “Want me to touch you? Ask for it.”

“Please,” Neville says, a reflex. “Please, please.”

“You can do better,” Snape says, and Neville’s brain has a meltdown. It’s everything he used to be afraid of, in one neat package, wanting to fuck him. It’s everything he used to be afraid of and he’s the one in charge here, really. The thought of Snape as he was when Neville was in school merges with this Snape, soft and hard for him, all at the same time. It’s going to be very embarrassing. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” Neville says and watches the way Snape’s mouth slowly slips open, just a little bit. He moves his face to bury it in Snape’s neck, the side without the scars. Snape makes a noise, a strangled, wounded noise.

“Beg,” Snape breathes.

“Please touch me, p-please,” he stutters, knows what a cliché he is. Pathetic, like Snape said. He twitches, doesn’t want to think about that right now. It shouldn’t even have occurred to him and, angry, he bites down on Snape’s neck. Snape groans and brings his hand down to Neville’s dick. Slowly, slowly he strokes him, squeezes on the head each downstroke. Neville is breathing quickly now, a hot and fast in and out, and Snape slowly starts to match it. 

“I’m gonna,” Neville says, doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. It’s a miracle he even managed to get out that much. 

“Lean back, let me look at you,” Snape says and tugs gently on Neville’s hair. He leans back, balances on his knees and on Snape’s lap, squeezing his eyes shut. He can feel it in his whole body, feel it pooling in his stomach, building, building.

He comes with a groan, all over Snape’s stomach and his crotch, stripes of white. For a second, his head is a blank. A wonderful emptiness. 

“You look so lovely,” Snape is saying when he returns to himself, opens his eyes to see Snape jerking himself off, quick and efficient. In an obscene gesture, Snape slides his hand over the mess Neville has made and then goes back to touching himself, uses Neville’s come as lubrication. It’s overwhelming, how hot he looks like that, so overwhelming that Neville doesn’t know what to do with himself. He ends up just sitting there, watching as Snape’s arm tenses up, how the whole of him tenses up and then relaxes and then Snape’s mess joins Neville’s, pulses like a heartbeat. 

They kiss, Neville almost missing Snape’s mouth. Neville wants to tell him how great it was, how much he enjoyed it and never wants to stop doing it, but he doesn’t. Instead he slides off Snape’s lap, gets up to get some paper to clean them off. 

When he comes back, Snape is still where he left him, still sticky and tired. He takes the paper Neville offers him and dabs up the worst of it, hands it back for Neville to throw away. 

They lie down next to each other after that, barely touching. They should talk. They should have a conversation not fuelled by wanting to come. 

“So,” Neville starts and has no idea where to go from there.

“Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” Neville says, turns his head to look at him. “No, definitely not. Have you?”

“No,” Snape says, not reassuring. Just saying it. 

It feels so incredibly strange. It feels like something big has happened, like something irreversible. He knows, somewhere, that this doesn’t have to be such a big deal, but he also knows he can’t take this back. This place, now, this house, will always be the place where this happened. It’s always going to be a part of the story. He wonders who he would get to tell this story to. Would Snape let him do that? Tell people? Not the details, of course, but that… what they are now. What are they? His mind is suddenly alive, pricking, with questions. 

“Is this… a one time thing? Do you want to do it again?”

“I don’t think I have the stamina for a repeat just yet,” Snape jokes dryly. 

“You know what I mean. What, um, do you want to do?” Neville asks, his throat suddenly clamping up. 

Snape seems to think it over. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he says. 

“Do you think I should move out?” 

Snape seems to wake up, then, turns from staring at the ceiling to staring at Neville. “Why should you do that?”

“I mean. If it’s… I don’t know. It might make it weird?” he mumbles. 

“No,” he says, with such a definitive tone that it makes Neville want to laugh.

“Okay,” he smiles. “Okay, if you won’t get sick of me.”

“I need to shower. And eat something,” Snape says, and then gentler, “I can come back to bed if you want to stay.”

Neville gives a cough at that, a surprisingly intense cough. This is going to be bad, he realises. This is a bad thing. “No, I’m gonna get up,” he just says and then Snape leaves, leaves Neville alone in his bed. 

He’s in Snape’s bed. Fantasising about Snape, that’s one thing. Having this happen, having sex with Snape, that’s… That’s not good. Snape isn’t the type you have a relationship with, and Neville is definitely a relationship type. He can’t imagine Snape caring for someone, being with someone the way Neville wants him to. Living with Snape like a partner, like a… like a housewife, is what he’s going to do now?

Snape doesn’t have the capability to be what Neville wants him to, does he? Neville imagines Snape, the professor, in the potions classroom. The professor that made his life hell, that made it difficult to wake up the mornings he had potions, that made him dread walking the halls because what if he ran into him. 

Neville knows he’s a different person now. He’s not eleven and tiny and afraid of authority figures. He’s stronger and bigger and more in control. Still though. The charm with fantasising about Snape was that that image of him as older and more threatening and stern was still there in the back of his head, still there and able to be controlled by those thoughts. What does he have now, when he has actually acted on them? 

‘I’ll do whatever you want’ he’d said. What does that mean? That’s fine, but any sign of affection that he has managed to extract from Snape has been when he was drunk. Even then, the only thing he said was that he wanted to sleep with him. 

An hour later, Snape has showered and Neville has crawled downstairs to the smell of eggs cooking and fresh coffee. They decide to eat breakfast in the living room, sitting on opposite ends of the same sofa, Neville with his legs drawn up against his chest and his plate balancing precariously on his knees. Neville glances up at him now and again where he sits reading the paper, drinking his coffee. 

“How did it go? Yesterday? You never really told me,” Neville says, takes a bite of his toast and eggs. 

“Fine.”

“Did you…” Neville starts but realises half way through that there’s no point in even trying to get Snape to talk about it. He clearly, obviously, doesn’t want to, for some reason. Snape looks up at him when he realises there is no end coming to the sentence. 

“What?” he asks, sounds ready to defend himself. 

“Nothing,” Neville smiles. “I’m just happy that… that this happened.”

He stretches out his feet, and this way he can almost touch Snape with the tips of his toes. Snape doesn’t say anything, stays stubbornly quiet. He doesn’t even look at him. 

“Are you? Glad it happened?” Neville asks, his voice too unsure for his own liking. He tries to get Snape to look at him, to at least glance his way, but there’s nothing. 

“Let’s not make it…” Snape starts to say and then the crushing, “complicated.”

Something inside Neville twists, sinks. He pulls his feet back, and then regrets it. He shouldn’t be this affected. He knows what Snape is like. There is no soft core to him, there is only ice, all the way through. 

“Okay,” he says, tries not to sound too disappointed. Snape has a right to say no to this. “Yeah, you’re right.”

At this, Snape finally looks at him. There’s nothing there, no secret emotion that Neville can make out. Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from magnetic fields' let's pretend we're bunny rabbits, because i thought it was fitting!
> 
> sorry this chapter swung around to angsty again! i'll make sure to not take so long with the next update so you won't have to marinate in this less than happy chapter ending.


	8. true i'm in love with you but

Neville is in class, in potions class. Snape has dragged him up to the front, in front of the class. He’s asking him something but all he can hear is a buzz, like there is a cloud, or a swarm of something, in his head making it impossible to hear.

“Do you know, Longbottom? The next step to this, incredibly simple, beginner level-?”

Someone shouts something, Harry probably. Neville looks out at the crowd but can’t see anyone, can only see a dim, dark classroom. There are faces but he recognises no one.

“We read about it for today,” Snape says, a mockery of being helpful. “Do you remember that? The chapter you were supposed to have read for today?”

“No,” Neville mumbles, his eyes on the floor.

“Excuse me?” Snape says, his voice hard. Neville doesn’t dare look up at him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Neville says and thinks he might start crying. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what did we expect?” Snape says to the class and someone snickers. It tears through Neville like an ice pick and then settles there, for him to carry with him.

Suddenly he’s torn out of the memory, landing back in the sofa with Snape opposite him, breathing harshly. Neville gets up from the sofa, takes a few steps around the room, his fists clenching and unclenching. Snape sits there, silent.

Neville wishes the room wasn’t so warm, wishes they hadn’t started a fire in the fireplace. He wants to be cold, wants to think about something other than what he just experienced, wants to freeze.

“I’m ready to go again,” he says finally, Snape still in the chair.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his wand hand limp in his lap. “We can continue another night.”

“No, I’m sure,” Neville swallows and sits down again. His face feels strange, like it’s too tense, or too stiff.

“Try not to think about it,” Snape murmurs, brings his hand up to Neville’s face. Not to hold him, or stroke it but to establish a more stable connection. Skin contact and all that.

Neville tries not to do that as they sink down into his mind again, into a new memory right away.

This time he’s older. He relaxes, lets himself relax. This isn’t too bad. He knows this night, and it’s not a bad night, not too embarrassing. He’s standing by the bar, waiting to dance, a drink in his hand. It’s some shitty muggle gay bar in London, too crowded and too hot. He loves it.

It’s from last year, a single night of fun they awarded themselves, him and Ginny and Luna. Luna is out there somewhere, dancing with a dark skinned girl with a nose piercing somewhere in the crowd and Ginny is next to him, nodding her head to the beat and trying to get the attention of the bartender. She’s saying something to him, grumbling under her breath about the slowness of the service and Neville laughs, despite not hearing what she said. He’s happy. This might actually be the last time he was really happy.

A boy, a man, on the dance floor is looking at him, smiling. Neville knows what happens next. He is going to come over, he’s going to buy Neville a drink. He’s pretty, has large brown eyes and a nice smile, and Neville is going to kiss him at the end of the night. He looks back, smiles.

Snape pulls him out of the memory, and it’s like breaking the surface of water. He gasps, breaks away from Snape’s grip on his head, leans back in the sofa. They breathe, separate from each other.

“Are you okay?” Neville asks when he’s fully back there, fully back in himself.

“I’m fine. Why?” Snape snaps, his face pale. He might be shaking just a little bit.

“Let’s stop. We’ve done enough for tonight,” he says, tries to get his voice to be firm.

“We can go again.” Like a petulant toddler, that’s what he sounds like.

“No,” he says. “I’m tired. You must be tired.”

“Fine,” Snape says, opens his hands in a gesture that makes it seem like he’s given up.

Neville wants a drink. Neville wants to go to sleep. When Snape pours himself a whiskey, Neville is there with a glass of his own, steals the bottle right out of his hand. He wants to sit outside, really, but it’s too cold. It’s still only January, the snow is still coating every outside surface. So he sits in the living room, sips his drink.

“It’s going better, right?” Neville asks, feeling a little warm from the drink. “I mean, it feels more stable, right?”

“I think so,” Snape says.

Snape shouldn’t have brushed him off like that when he said it would be weird. It is weird. It is getting increasingly, incredibly weird. Neville gulps at his drink and Snape glances up briefly before looking down into his book.

“What are you reading?” Neville asks and Snape sighs. Like Neville is being annoying, like he just wants to be left alone.

“Nothing you’d find interesting.”

Neville bites his lip. He’s going to be stupid tonight, he knows it.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, finishes his drink. It’s definitely getting to his head now. “Can I see?”

He moves slowly to the sofa Snape is in, sits down next to him, as close as he can get and glances down at the page.

“This isn’t English,” Neville blurts and can feel Snape smile next to him. He can’t see it but he can feel it, his body feeling lighter somehow.

“No, it’s Latin,” Snape says patiently.

“Oh,” Neville mumbles, wishes he had another drink. “What does it say?”

Snape sighs, closes the book and puts it on the side table. “Did you want something?”

“No,” Neville mumbles, shakes his head. It feels like his brain is sloshing around in there, small and confused. “No, I just wanted to… I don’t know.”

Snape kisses him, one hand on his jaw, a hand that then moves to the back of his head as Neville melts into Snape’s side. He puts his hand on Snape’s knee, the other one in a loose fist in his lap. Snape’s lips are warm and he tastes like whiskey. Without breaking the kiss, he rearranges himself so that he’s facing him more, so that he can press his whole body into Snape’s and it feels like this is what he was made to do, like this is why he came here.

“You don’t know?” Snape asks and Neville doesn’t know anything other than that he wants to kiss him again, wants Snape to touch him like he did a few days ago. They haven’t since then, haven’t done anything at all but be awkward and not talk to each other. “Tell me about the boy in that memory,” Snape suddenly says, his voice smooth and low.

“Um,” Neville says. “His name is Luke, I think.”

“Biblical,” Snape remarks, close to Neville’s ear. He can hear him breathing, in and out, slow and steady.

“Yeah,” Neville laughs, closes his eyes as Snape’s mouth touches his earlobe.

“Did you take him home?”

“He took me home, yeah,” Neville answers, only lying a little. He wanted to take Neville home but Neville was too shy. They kissed, once, in the back of the bar.

“Tell me about it,” Snape presses.

“No,” Neville protests and pushes away slightly. “No, that doesn’t seem… That seems unfair, that you get to look into my head like that and ask me about it.”

Snape smirks, his eyes lighting up. “Life is unfair,” he says, his hand now in Neville’s hair. It forms into a fist, slowly, and tugs.

Neville is suddenly sad, shakes his head so that Snape’s hand falls useless against the back of the sofa.

“Did I mess this up?” he asks, quiet. The noise from the fire seems louder than any noise Snape gives. No sounds of him breathing now even. Neville nervously fills the silence. “I have, I’ve messed this up.”

Neville pulls away from him, curls up on the other side of the sofa. He doesn’t want to play this game. It’s more serious than reciting quotes to each other, but more meaningless. He doesn’t want to talk dirty to Snape about some other guy, someone else that was only half as interesting as Snape, if that.

He wrinkles his nose at his own thoughts, drags a hand across his face in frustration. He doesn’t want to do this, he’s not this guy that compares lovers. It’s cheap, he’s cheap, Snape only wants him because he isn’t complicated.

Slowly he drags his feet down to the floor, sighs. And then Snape talks.

“You haven’t,” he says, not to soothe him, just because it’s true. “Don’t leave,” he adds, puts a hand on Neville’s back.

“You tell me all these things I haven’t done, I shouldn’t do,” Neville sighs. “What should I do then? Everything is… wrong.”

“What? What is wrong?” Snape asks him, agitated now.

“I don’t want to,” Neville says, shrugs off Snape’s hand and stands up, “I don’t want to just do this. I can’t just do _this_. It has to be different.”

“Different from what?” he hears Snape say from behind him. Neville stares into the fire, debates whether he should just leave. The room, the house. He knows what he should say, he should tell him that Snape’s fierceness, bordering on unpleasant, is only manageable when he can pretend he doesn’t care what he thinks. He can’t do that now, haven’t really been able to for quite some time. And Snape can’t pretend either, that this doesn’t make things different. It has to.

“From how we normally are. I can’t…” Neville shakes his head almost violently. “I know you, I know you can’t do this, I-“

“You don’t,” Snape says, closer to him now. He can feel his warmth behind him, the space his body takes up. He’s angry, or upset. Or both. “You don’t know what I can and can’t do.

Neville lets out a frustrated puff of air. “Why don’t you then? Is it shame?”

“What?” Snape asks again, his hand on Neville’s back now, touching him again.

“Are you ashamed? Of something? Afraid?” Neville lets him touch him, likes the gentle heat. “What else could it be? You turn it on and off like a switch, and I can’t do that.”

Snape presses up against him and Neville can feel him breathing against his neck. He can feel his hands too, and sidesteps away.

“Stop it,” he says, determined not to let Snape’s body do the talking. He might be looking too fierce because Snape reacts to him pulling away by clenching his jaw and falling in on himself. He looks like a sad piece of cloth, his robes hanging off him. Neville softens his reaction by a quiet, “I can’t think when you do that.”

“You want me to be nicer, is that it?” Snape asks, mouth moving only as much as it has to.

“I just, I can only take so much rejection,” Neville answers, sad and defeated. Snape is a rock and he is the hard place and whatever this is it should have stayed a fantasy. It isn’t realistic.

“I’m not rejecting you.” Snape’s voice is so controlled Neville finds it hard to parse what he’s actually saying. He hears the words, sure, but the meaning is more difficult. It’s like he’s speaking a different language. “I meant what I said. Whatever you want.”

The words twist inside Neville’s stomach. That’s all Neville needs, really. What about this is realistic? Aren’t they in this temporary, remote bubble because nothing makes sense?

“Really?” he asks, and he knows that he sounds like a schoolboy with a crush. A naïve, silly schoolboy. He’s delusional if he thinks this is going to work.

“I know I’m,” Snape takes a breath. “I’m aware of how I’ve acted. It’s not because I don’t-”

“I get that you’re not – I know I sound stupid – but you know, I get that you’re not a relationship type,” Neville stutters, leaning against the sofa now. He looks down at his hands as Snape starts talking.

“I’m not a type,” he says, seems disgusted with the idea. He seems to oscillate between anger and agreement, like he doesn’t know whether to be defensive or not.

“I know you’re not,” Neville agrees softly, which seems to make Snape lower his guard a little. He does the same thing, can’t decide between being angry or giving up or being hopeful or flattered.

“What are you then? You’re the relationship type?” Neville can tell how much effort it takes for Snape to not sneer when he repeats the term.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And you want what, a relationship?” Snape spits angrily.

“No, I...” Neville starts. “I don’t want a relationship. I don’t know. I just, I can’t just fuck without any emotion.”

Snape seems taken aback by the curse word, raises his eyebrows just a little. “It doesn’t have to be without emotion. I never-“

“What emotion?” Neville bites back, sticks with the swearing because then at least he gets a reaction. “What emotion have you showed me, huh? You want to fuck me, that’s all I know. No, I’m sorry, you want to fuck. Does it matter that it’s me?”

“Yes,” Snape answers, clenching his fists.

“I just don’t want to be scared of rejection every time I talk to you.” Neville is exasperated and tired, and can feel the tense air building up to something, a storm. “I just don’t want to be scared.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Snape asks, his face soft and when he reaches his hand out to touch Neville’s face, Neville lets him. He doesn’t exactly sound like he’s sorry about it. There’s more a careful, horrified fascination in the question, like how you would ask about the sick family member of an acquaintance.

“I used to be,” he admits, although they both knew that. “But no, I’m not afraid of you.”

He’s afraid of leaving this place and realising everything was made up. That he was still happier with this made up nonsense than he can be out there.

Snape’s hand nestles in his hair, tugs his face up to look at him. “I’ll be better,” he says, sincere and intense.

Neville doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods, the smallest movement he can make with Snape’s hand clutching his hair like that. Hard, almost too hard. His scalp hurts where Snape is pulling his head back, forcing it. He lets Snape watch him as he brings his own eyes slowly down his body, licks his lips. He feels slightly like his body is separate from him, something else. He doesn’t know why he does that, that overt and over the top signal. He’s not used to it, to being sexual like that. Sexy, even. It’s Snape’s grip on his hair, the intensity of it all, or maybe it’s how open Snape has been. Maybe he can be open too, brave too.

Snape opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but Neville doesn’t give him a chance. He moves, tilts backwards so that the only thing keeping him from falling backwards onto the sofa is Snape’s hand, and Snape follows, has to. With one leg up, Neville steadies himself and now Snape is close, very close, one of Neville’s legs between his.

He reaches a hand out, cautiously, and places it on Snape’s hip. As if to steady himself, but really just to touch him. He can feel the hipbone under his hand, through the layers of clothing. How many layers is that? Robes, trousers, underwear. So close still, just a few layers.

Neville presses down on his hip and up with his leg at the same time and Snape loses his balance a little, leans forward again and releases Neville’s head. The hand ends up on one of the pillows next to Neville, sinks into it. Like a claw, that’s what it looks like, nails digging into the softness there as Neville rocks forward.

Snape is hard, or beginning to be anyhow. Neville can tell not only by how his trousers have seemed to get a little tighter, but also by the sound Snape lets roll out of his throat, the low groan.

It’s intoxicating, what Snape looks like right now. The knowledge that Neville is the one who made him sound like that, makes him feel drunk, sloppy.

He brings his hand around to Snape’s backside, bunches up his robes as his hand finds the spot where his back turns to soft round buttocks. With the rest of his arm tense against his ass, he pulls him closer, buries his face in the middle of his stomach. The fabric is rough and dark, smells like detergent and the stuffiness of the cellar, and beneath that Snape’s body.

Snape strokes the back of his neck, his fingers cool and as Neville rocks forward again he pushes his nails down into his skin. He wonders if that will leave a mark, and the delight of that thought makes him smile, an open mouthed smile pressed against Snape’s stomach. When he pulls back, there’s a darker spot where his mouth was, where he has left spit all over him.

“Sorry,” he murmurs and Snape doesn’t seem to register what he’s said at first. He looks drunk too, his eyes dim and his mouth relaxed. “I made your shirt all wet.”

Snape brings his hand up absentmindedly to feel it, the fabric.

“Take it off,” Neville says, almost a question.

Snape doesn’t take it off, instead he leans down, kisses Neville harshly, opening his mouth with his own. It’s an awkward position for him, he has to lean most of his weight onto Neville and Neville almost falls backward again, has to push back just as fiercely as Snape presses down onto him just to stay in balance.

He laughs, once, and breaks up the kiss. “Don’t do that,” Neville smiles. “You’re going to tip me over.”

“Oh?” Snape says, pushes just the slightest bit, on purpose, the bastard. Neville falls backwards, laughing. It knocks the air out of him, and the noise breaks them up more than anything, the dampened whoosh as he hits the cushions. Snape is unmoved, straightens his robes and the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile.

He leaves, just like that, strides across the room to the stairs.

“Are you coming?” he throws out behind him,

 

\--

The beginning of it is awkward, all careful touches and coming quickly and then wiping off. The part after that is even more difficult, when Neville doesn’t know whether to leave or not, whether Snape wants him there or not. He tries to watch Snape, to see whether he’s tired or not and then in the end he doesn’t have to make a decision at all.

“Stay,” Snape says, in the quiet and dark room, in the middle of the night.

They don’t sleep, no, neither of them are used to sharing a bed like this. They do other things, and then try to sleep for a bit, fail. Neville ends up on his stomach, facing Snape. This way he can watch him as he lies there and looks up at the ceiling, hair splayed across the pillow. Outside the large windows the moon shines down on the snow. White and ghostly and unreal, almost glowing.

When Snape gets sick of lying still with his eyes on the ceiling, he turns to Neville, head bent and hands cool.

Snape uses his mouth, which Neville had no idea could be this good. Well, he’d suspected that if it was Snape, it would be this good. He can put all of him in his mouth, so that Neville almost bumps against the back of his throat. No one has ever done that to Neville, and it feels like a show off move, like Snape is trying to impress him. It works. When he pulls back, he swipes a hand across his lips and breathes harshly, like he has run a marathon. His mouth is open, wet and pink. He swipes his tongue up his dick one time and Neville comes.

His body twists and he tries to press his hips down on the bed, but they want to push up against that mouth again, into his mouth again. Embarrassingly, he whines, loud and desperate, as he makes a mess all over both of them.

“A warning, next time?” Snape asks when Neville is finished. Neville can barely hear him over his own harsh breathing.

After an embarrassingly long blank moment, where Neville isn’t able to register someone talking, he answers, “Sorry,” almost laughing at himself.

“Good, then?” Snape asks, getting back into bed with him.

Now Neville does laugh, both because of how obviously good he thought it was and how needy Snape sounds, how much he wants him to tell him he liked it. Why is that, he wonders. Is it because Snape is self-conscious? Because he’s worried about what Neville thinks?

“Yes,” he says, kisses Snape’s shoulder, and then moves up his neck, to his jaw. “Yes.”

Snape tilts his head, tries to get away and Neville won’t let him, smiles against his jaw.

“Do you want me to return the favour?” Neville asks, his hands still on him, travelling down his body. He likes that expression, travelling, like Snape is the entire world and Neville is a tourist. He wants to take pictures of him, dirty ones, put them in a holiday album. Tourist pictures of all the great sites, all the pompous monuments and quaint, charming alleys.

Snape pulls his head away again, stops Neville’s hand with his own. “No,” he mumbles. “I think I’m quite spent.”

The sun will rise soon, Neville knows. Time still works, there’s still a sun that can rise, still a world outside this house. It doesn’t feel like it, in this warm bed, Snape’s cool hands burning into his skin. The thought of an outside world feels intrusive, almost threatening. He wants only this, only this to exist.

“Okay, let me know if you change your mind,” Neville says and Snape lowers his head down to the pillow, relaxes. “You look so good,” Neville murmurs, on a whim. Without being able to stop himself.

Snape looks up at the ceiling again, makes a face. “You might be slightly biased.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Neville says, his hands on Snape’s chest. “You do though.”

“Sure,” Snape goes.

“Sorry I’m so clingy.” It suddenly strikes him, how he keeps touching him, can’t keep his hands off him. It must be uncomfortable.

“Did someone tell you that?” Snape wonders, detached. He does that, asks him questions and seems detached, but he isn’t, really.

Neville has pulled his arm back, presses it against his own body. “No, I just know that, um, that you don’t like that. Right? And I know I can be a bit touchy feely.”

“It’s fine,” Snape just says, and Neville nods. He doesn’t know why he said that, he’s not touchy feely. Only with the people closest to him, with his friends. Otherwise he doesn’t like people touching him either, but that’s on him probably. It’s more that he’s not comfortable with himself than it is that he’s not comfortable with other people.

He falls asleep after that, sleeps for a few hours. He dreams of nothing, a black mist. Like when Snape prods his mind, but this swirling nothingness is ominous and threatening and full of dark things. Any time now the mist will shape itself into something horrifying, something bloodthirsty and feral. Large, dark teeth, glistening.

Snape wakes him up in the morning with coffee in bed, a surprisingly tender gesture that makes his heart hammer away in his chest. He shakes off the nightmare easily, has gotten used to it by now.

Snape sits at the edge of the bed, looks down into his coffee cup. He seems like he wants to say something, like he wants to talk to him. He doesn’t, and Neville can’t guess what it is he wants to say.

“How long have you been up?” Neville asks as he smiles gently into his coffee cup.

“A while. I don’t generally do well at sleeping in,” Snape admits.

Neville nods and then suddenly Snape kisses him, almost makes him spill the coffee all over the stark white sheets. Well, Neville wouldn’t use stark now, the sheets are too mussed and warm and there is something sterile about the word. The bed isn’t sterile at all, it’s lived in.

“What was that for?” Neville laughs as Snape pulls away.

“I’m being nice. Wasn’t that what you asked for?” he says, smug.

Neville smiles. “Oh. Nice. Yeah, I like it.”

Snape settles in the bed next to him, his weight making the mattress shift.

“What are you doing today?” Neville asks, tries to keep his voice light and not nosy.

“Working,” Snape answers, takes a sip of his own coffee.

“In the cellar? Potions?” Neville asks, like that’s not where Snape does all of his work, always.

“Yes,” Snape says. “Although perhaps I can cut down on my hours. For a while.”

It’s a question, really. Neville knows that. “Yeah. Let’s eat something nice tonight. I’ll cook.”

After a while of sitting there, Snape gradually becoming bolder with his touching, now running his hand up Neville’s leg, Neville asks him, “What is it you do? I mean, I know you brew potions but…”

“What it’s for?” Snape asks, following his own hand’s movements with his eyes. “I sell them. To whoever wants it. To St. Mungo’s, for example.”

“Oh. That’s cool.”

Snape seems like he wants to laugh at him, but to his credit he doesn’t. “Yes,” he says simply. “I do some research as well. Improvements on existing potions, new variations.”

“Oh,” Neville repeats. “Do you miss… Miss being a teacher, being at Hogwarts?”

Snape sneers, his movements stop. “Those are two different questions,” he says, his head tilted slightly.

He doesn’t seem to want to say any more than that, and Neville can understand it. He wants to talk to him about his behaviour as a teacher, as a Headmaster, but to do that he has to also talk to Snape about other things. He has to get Snape to open up about all kinds of things. Where he feels at home, why, what his family is like, how he feels about what his life looks like now. That’s not going to happen.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asks instead, and the tension eases. They make pleasant small talk, something Neville never would have thought they’d ever do.

_It’s surprising. It’s easy,_ Neville writes to Luna. _Have you ever felt like this? Can you understand?_ He knows that it sounds self absorbed and childish, but it’s a crush. How could it not be just that? Is it more than a crush?

Every time he hears the hatch open in the kitchen, when he hears Snape walking up the steps to the kitchen his heart starts pounding. Snape is unexpectedly physical with his affection. He pats his arm, he touches his waist when he’s cooking, he kisses him. Often, everywhere. He kisses his cheek in the kitchen as he passes him, his wrist when they sit in the sofa downstairs. In bed, their bed, he kisses the piece of skin at his hip, right where his thigh starts.

They sleep together most nights now. Neville feels weird calling it their bed, and he would never say it out loud, but that’s really what it is. He only sleeps alone when they have trouble sleeping, either of them. Sometimes they stay up together, but sometimes, when he wakes up for the third time in a night, it’s just easier going to sleep in his own single bed. He doesn’t want to wake Snape up.

Sometimes Snape has so much trouble with his scar, the rough and red part of his neck, that he can’t sleep. They stay up together sometimes, or he wakes up to find Snape gone, the bed empty. He can’t be pulled from his nightmares some nights, other nights he goes downstairs and convinces Snape to let him help, to let him rub the healing lotion in or something.

Snape asks him, cautiously, if he’d like some Dreamless Sleep one night. Not any night, the third night he has apparently woken Snape up by thrashing. It catches him off guard, the easy and soft way he says it. That Neville has nightmares can’t have escaped him, that he has trouble sleeping is certainly no surprise. But Snape acknowledging it, that’s a surprise.

“I… I don’t think I need it,” Neville says, getting up to make himself a cup of tea. As he’s pulling on his pants he continues, “I mean, I get so fuzzy in the head the day after.”

“It’s not a good long term solution, I agree,” Snape says, rubbing his eyes. “But a few nights, I-“

“You don’t have to get up too,” Neville smiles lightly. “I don’t need a potion, I’m fine.”

Snape ignores him and as he leaves their bedroom, he follows him, follows him all the way downstairs.

“What are they about? Your nightmares?” Snape asks, also surprising. Neville wouldn’t have thought he’d care.

He laughs, pouring water into the kettle. “Do you want a cup too?”

Snape doesn’t answer, just looks at him. He’s still in his nightshirt, a long and old fashioned thing that Neville would hate on anyone else. On him it looks regal, dignified, even like this. His head in his hands, leaning against the kitchen counter, dark circles under his eyes and his hair tousled.

“I don’t know,” he says, drops the sugar in the cup and pulls a tea bag out of the packet. “All sorts of things. I’m just a… an anxious guy.”

He says a lot of stupid things that night. Probably because of how sweet Snape looks, how at home he feels. And probably because Snape sits quietly, listens so patiently. He’s projecting now probably. Snape isn’t this soft, but this night it’s not difficult to pretend he is.

“I used to have a lot of, I don’t know, anxiety attacks,” he begins, while Snape watches him with those dark pools of eyes. “At school, at lot.”

Snape sits quietly, intensely. This is a stupid thing to tell him.

“It gets hard to breathe, like someone has pulled rope all around me and tightened it. Everything gets… unreal,” Neville continues. “Like I’m under water or something. Like it’s not happening to me, like my body is… is something else, apart from me.”

Again, he’s silent, stares at him.

“It feels like that, sometimes, in my dreams. Like I’m having an anxiety attack that won’t ever stop. Like I’m drowning. Most often, it’s that. When I dream. Sometimes it’s memories, but usually just that.”

“Just that?” Snape mumbles, and then, if possible, even quieter, “When in school did it happen?”

“What are you asking?”

Snape looks down at the counter top and Neville knows exactly what he’s asking.

“You want to know if you ever made me have an anxiety attack?” Neville continues, his skin crawling. He suddenly remembers the tea. The water is hot now and he pours it carefully into the clunky, too large cup. He shouldn’t have put that much sugar in it, he knows that, the sugar won’t get him to go to sleep again. He turns back to Snape who has stopped staring at the counter and now instead stares at him again. A part of him wants to lie to him. A part of him wants to hold onto this soft, new Snape and forget the old one, keep them separate. He can’t though, it would be unfair to both of them. “I did feel like that after your classes, yeah. A lot of the time.”

“I’m sorry,” Snape says, earnest and sad.

“It’s fine. A lot of things made me feel like that in school,” Neville says and the weak smile he offers up feels useless.

“Don’t make excuses for me-“

“I’m not,” Neville interrupts him. “I’m not making excuses. You could have been better. But, I mean, you’re better now, I guess.”

A weak response really and Snape shifts, seems to think so too.

“Why do you think I deserve this?” Snape asks, his hands calm and clasped in front of him.

Neville lets out a laugh. “What? What do you mean?” When Snape just stares at him, he shakes his head and continues, “It’s four in the morning, I don’t know. This conversation is too intense for this early in the morning.”

“No, I want you to answer me, I want you to-“ Snape says, and his fingers twitch the tiniest bit, like what he wants to do is reach out.

“I don’t know, I’m not some sort of God. I don’t decide whether you deserve things or not,” Neville says, stirring his cup of tea.

“No,” Snape lets out in a frustrated gust of air. “But you’ve decided to, what, forgive me? You’re not angry.”

“Of course I’m angry,” Neville frowns.

“But you share a bed with me, you talk to me, you’re… patient with me. Kind,” Snape says, almost like it’s an insult.

“Yeah, but that’s because I…” Neville stops himself in the middle of the sentence, when he looks up at Snape’s face and realises what he’s saying. “That’s because I’m in love with you, probably,” he admits after a moment of silence, and then stands there, scared.

A second stupid thing to say. He wishes he’d said this in bed, where things seem a bit more unreal. Where he can bury his face in the sheets and Snape can pretend he didn’t hear him. Not in this kitchen, cold morning light shining through the windows, with the large, solid kitchen counter between them.

“I-“ Snape begins saying, at the same time as Neville also starts talking.

“It’s too early for this,” he says, grabs his tea and flees into the living room. “There’s hot water in the kettle if you change your mind about the tea,” he mumbles, but he’s almost certain that Snape can’t hear him, not from this far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny, tiny baby steps! we're all on the road to something


End file.
